


Of the Night

by MellowShark (TheAssbenderWhisperer), orphan_account



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Erik just happens to be the human he falls in love with, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Occasional serial killing, Shaw is Creepy, They meet as kids, charles is a fairy, minor Hank/Raven and Armando/Angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 64,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3282929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAssbenderWhisperer/pseuds/MellowShark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a young age, Charles hasn't been like most fairies. His curiosity for what lies beyond the walls of the garden sets him apart from the other children, but also means he finds friends in the unlikeliest of creatures - humans, the one thing every fae child is told to fear most. But then the day comes where he goes over the walls, and it is there that he falls in love with a boy named Erik, that he learns the tragedy of a fairy's love that can never be returned and discovers the truth of the curse that plagues their town. Because there is magic in the world, but also darkness, and no amount of years can change a fairy's heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, man. I can't believe it's finally done!
> 
> I haven't written this much for a single fanfic since, jeez, probably 2010. Everything just kinda got away from me, but I'm so, so glad (and thankful) that I managed to get this far in and was able to accomplish so much of what I had planned for it in time!
> 
> All I gotta say is thank you to Lou for all her encouragement and her awesome ideas, her art masterpost can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3277145), go look at bb Charles! Ah, my heart. I'm really happy that I got to write for her because this!! au!!! I lived and breathed it tbh, and it was an amazing experience to write - first big bang I've tried (you can check out the xmen reverse big bang livejournal [here](http://xmenreversebang.livejournal.com/)), and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
> 
> And finally, special thanks goes to my roommate for letting me complain to her constantly as I forged through writing this. She does not suffer fools lightly, and I am 98% sure she absorbed my stress through osmosis. You a real troopa! (:

The thing about fairies is that, by the strangest of prescribed designs, they are incapable of experiencing want, though they can, in fact, be unfathomably stubborn when it comes to the needs of those they care for most. To _want_ is to be greedy. To want, they say, frantic whispers passed down from elder to every fae child, is to be human.

It’s a matter of happenstance that a fairy is born at all – chance, it could be called, that any single bud blooming on the cusp of spring holds a child within its petals. It is the seasonal high time of fairy births, the first day of many in which the cold begins to recede from the ground and the garden trembles with new life.

That is the very _magic_ of it all

But even magic has its rules.

The way Charles remembers it, there was nothing significantly odd about his birth. He is the only one who thinks this, of course - because among the fairyfolk it is generally known that, given the flowers of the fairies’ garden bloom under the sunlight of early morning the first day of spring, it _is_ odd for a fairy to be born - of all things - that very night, instead.

It is the first day of spring and the garden is alive with the palest and gentlest of colors, the cool whites and lavenders of carnations, soft yellow daffodils, and alabaster tulips. The morning progresses with merry festivities and celebration, the newest fae children waking to games of tag and chase, to sweet music played by elder fairies on instruments spun from grass and reeds. Their laughter fills the air until the sun has just begun to set, the sky dulling in the onset of dusk, and dies down to pleasant, joyous whispers as the children are shuffled off to nests in the trees the sparrows had so obligingly helped make.

For over a century the fairies have lived in the meandering expanse of garden set behind a small cottage, a low wall sealing them off from the rest of the surrounding town, though the stone has grown decrepit and weathered after years of disrepair. Their world is small and contained within the wall. But they are – happy. There’s the promise of a warm and undisturbed spring, and, now, two dozen new fairies to teach and watch grow.

The children are almost too in awe of the garden to be herded to bed. It takes some coaxing on behalf of the adults and the gentle chirping of a few besotted sparrows to get them settled down and under the warm leaves in their nests, their beautiful wings, a whole manner of colors and gradient hues that glow gold in the dim light, tucked close.

It has grown dark by the time the last of the sparrows take off for nests of their own. The garden is as quiet as it ever is, filled with the hum of insects and idle croaking of frogs in the pond. In the far back of the garden, two sparrows retreat to a hole in the most derelict sections of the wall, where a few of the stones have fallen out of place and allowed for a space just comfortable enough to fit a nest. The smaller of the two coos softly beneath its breath, wiggling into a pile of twigs and downy feathers as the other tries to find the best spot to fix itself down next to its mate.

They’re surprised, quite suddenly, by a muffled cry.

Quickly, the two birds hop to the edge of their hole and peer down. Their eyesight isn’t the best in the poor light, but after a moment one of them chirps, a confused sound, and flaps down to the ground. It’s a small drop from the hole to the dirt, a good four or five feet, and the sparrow makes the distance quickly. It hops in place, all the way around in a circle, before ruffling its feathers.

There aren’t as many flowers in the back of the garden, a few bushes here and there, and the area under the sparrows’ nest is mostly dry grit and a scattering of debris that has fallen from the wall. The sparrow tips its gaze up along the stones, cocking its head at the shadow of leaves protruding from a spot about halfway up to the nest. Curious, the bird flies to it for a closer look.

It _is_ a plant. Something dark in color, thin leaved and covered in a dusting of tiny thorns, that appears to have squeezed through a crack in the wall and grown within the magiked borders of the garden. The sparrow counts three buds, two of which are ugly and bent, unbloomed, and the third of which – _opens_ , right before its eyes.

The flower glows white in the dark, edges staining with purple as its petals unfold, as if dipped in ink and the color only now seeping through. The sparrow is at once filled with a sense of wonder, as well as - puzzlement, that a flower could bloom in the depth of night beneath the fair and discolored light of the moon. It is like nothing the small bird has ever seen before. But then the flower blooms fully, and the sparrow abruptly caws in surprise because _there_ , curled in its center is a _fae child_.

As far as fae go, the child is not visibly striking in any way - or at least, no more than most. Its skin is paler, certainly, pale as the smooth stones that cover the pondbottom and somewhat sallow, the shade the reeds take in the dead of winter when their color drains to nothing. And its wings, fanned out as they are against the bone-white petals, are a powdery blue so faint they are near opaque beneath certain angle of light. The child’s face is round, cheeks plush, and graced with lips a wholly unnatural shade of red.

When the child first moves, it is to release its breath against the fist it has curled against the side of its mouth, and the second, to turn its head toward the sparrow, still hovering a short distance away. The child’s hair follows the movement, curls round its cheeks and chin in neat tangles.

“Oh,” the child says, voice too soft to carry far. “You are rather beautiful.” It has opened its eyes for the very first time; now, those eyes are focused on the sparrow. They’re very, _very_ blue.

The sparrow is so stunned by the words it nearly forgets to keep flapping its wings.

Looking around, the child smiles and moves to its knees. It is naked, as all fairies are when they are born, and the sparrows thinks, dazedly, that the _fairy_ is rather beautiful.

“My name is...” The fairy blinks slowly, owlish. Then he nods decisively. “Ah. My name is Charles.”

The sparrow chirrups. Charles leans further forward, gaze dipping to the shadowed ground far below before darting back up.

“It’s very dark here,” he says. His brow has creased slightly, confusion filling the soft lines of his face. “Where is here?”

There’s the sound of more wingbeat as the other sparrow flies down from the nest, its brown and white markings appearing out of the gloom, bathed in the faint glow the fae child’s flower continues to give off. It jolts when it sees the child, flicking its head toward the first sparrow and giving it something of a bewildered look. The birds are both at a complete loss. No fairy has ever been born at _night_.

When the fairy turns his eyes on the second sparrow, his smile grows bigger, more slanted and a touch dopey with happiness. “Hello,” he greets it, then earnestly and doe-eyed, he asks, “Are you my family?”

The second sparrow gives the first another look, this one to the end of I _can’t believe you’re just flapping about gobsmacked with the poor thing sitting there like that_ , and for good measure, _we’ll talk about this later_. It flies close enough for the fairy to touch; and he does, gingerly setting his fingers upon the feathers of its neck.

The sparrow does not land on the flower, for fear of tearing the petals; to do so would hurt the fairy, of course, being its _birth_ flower. Instead, it pushes away and beckons the fairy to follow with a dip of its head.

The child – Charles – frowns, but stands. He wobbles as he gets his footing for the first time, and his wings flare out to keep his balance. Purple pollen coats his feet and trails up his legs, though he doesn’t seem to mind, rather, he delights at the sight of it.

As he nears the edge of his flower, his face grows unsettled. The sparrows hover a few feet away and wait, patiently, as the fairy gathers his courage.

It takes exactly four seconds after that last step for him to start panicking. Really, it’s no surprise that the very next thing he does is scream. He’s falling, the night a dark blur in his vision, the sound of rushing air loud in his ears. He’s falling, quick and terrifying, but then _he’s not_. His wings snap out in response to his fear and catch him on an updrift of air that stops his descent.

Charles’ heart is still beating wildly in his chest when the sparrows finally reappear at his sides. There’s distress in their eyes, and they trill to him, gentle and soothing, as he accustoms himself to his wings.

It’s strange, flying. He thinks he could do it forever if it kept him feeling like he does now – a great swell in his stomach and chest that makes him feel a part of the wind itself, gone lightheaded with it. Alive, he thinks, this is what it is to feel alive.

It has grown much darker as the night has progressed. The moon isn’t in full and a slowmoving cloud obscures most of it from view. Fairies are just as bad in the dark as sparrows, if not more, so Charles allows the two birds to guide him through the darkness of the garden, testing the breath of movement he can achieve with his wings and what each tilt and angle does to his flightpath along the way. It’s not long before the dark shape of a large tree comes into view, its branches shadowed, leaves indistinguishable in the low light, and the sparrows alight on one of the lower boughs.

Charles feels as though he is stumbling in the dark, slow and awkward, a fae child new to the world and having yet to know anything aside from darkness. The sparrows seem unbothered by this; they remain close to his side, nudge him with their beaks in turn and assure he isn’t going to fall. For a tiny fairy, the branch is thick enough to walk across without difficulty, and they do so now, the sparrows ushering him forward.

There’s a slight chill in the air that has only grown worse during their flight, and he rubs at his cheeks where they’ve grown stiff. Charles is only allowed a single shiver before his companions press snugly against him on either side, their warm feathers soft on his bare skin.

The fork where all the branches meet at the tree’s center is packed with nests, and what little moonlight filters between the leaves slants faltering lines across the sleeping bodies there, tiny fae children huddled close for warmth against the night chill.

Before Charles can step any closer, behind him, a cool voice asks, “What are you doing out of bed?”

He startles, and only the sparrows at his sides keep him from flailing off the branch. When he turns, he is met with the sight of another fairy. She’s older, ethereal in the way her wings and body glow a bright white, and dressed in a similarly refined white gown. Her beauty is tempered by the tight line of her frown and the chilly, shrewd way in which she regards Charles and the sparrows.

“I won’t ask you again,” her tone lightens despite her obvious impatience with his gawking, the veiled threat there more pronounced. “You should be in bed, youngling.”

Charles is overhasty to obey, sputtering, “I am sorry, truly. I’ve only now learned to fly. The sparrows brought me here, though I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”

The white fairy regards him slowly, the same cool manner about her, and Charles suspects she hardly ever looks at something any other way. “Flying, you say?” She sounds genuinely puzzled by this. Some of her cold mask slips away, and she gestures Charles forward across the small distance that separates them. “I don’t remember your face from today. I never forget a face.”

For all that she looks perfect and untouchable, cold, her wings radiate a certain warmth that Charles gravitates toward. She lays a delicate hand on his bare shoulder, perhaps only now realizing that he is unclothed, if the way her lips perk consideringly means anything. At her words, Charles’ eyebrows draw together. Adorable, on his round and childish face, still flushed from the wind. “Today? I have yet to be here longer than...,” he trails off, unsure. “You are the first of my kind I have met.”

They speak quietly, as they are still a little ways away from the sleeping children. She doesn’t seem to take the words well – her countenance seizes up, the hard veil slipping over her face just as soon as it had begun to soften, and there is an undertone of uncertainty to it, heavily shielded by a pragmatic neutrality. “Your flower,” she says, “where is it?”

Fairies are different from most magical creatures in that, along with the unusual and inexplicable way in which they come into being, they are born with certain inherent knowledge. It is true they do not arrive in the world by flesh and blood like humans, but fae children are still young and in need of learning and guidance. What little they are born with is instinctual and very little; they know that they are fae, that they are _magic_ , and that they are connected wholly to their birth flowers from birth unto death. And when instinct kicks in—that is to say, a fairy will stop at nothing to protect the source of their life essence itself. Because such a simple flower, really an awful lot more than that, is a fairy’s heart.

Charles is resistant to the idea of telling a stranger, even another fairy, anything about his flower. He hesitates, deliberates for only a moment before nodding. “It grows from a crack in a wall, that way.” He gestures out into the darkness, beyond the shared glow of their wings.

The white fairy’s immediate response is a low hiss beneath her breath. “Weeds in the garden? Impossible.” Her hand, which had slowly crept up to cup Charles’ cheek, tightens around his jaw; she wrenches his face up, her eyes narrowing as she searches for something there. “Weeds have no place here,” she moves to caress his cheek with the tips of her long nails, “no matter how pretty.”

Charles’ shivers at the touch, stiffens and stills. The white fairy’s nails move with purpose; she runs them down his neck, and Charles, he’s _trapped there,_ in her embrace –

One of the sparrows screeches in warning, and what he expects to happen next, well, doesn’t. She releases him, the air rushes back into his lungs – she must have been _choking_ him – and he propels himself backwards, away from her. He almost panics when another hand grasps his shoulder and drags him back.

“Emma,” someone says sharply. “ _What_ do you think you’re doing?” Someone has appeared at his back, and when he tips his head around to get a look at their face, he’s met with the sight of another fairy. The look in her eyes is _furious_.

The white fairy scoffs, but when she opens her mouth to defend herself, she’s cut off again. “Emma,” this new fairy is saying. Her touch is gentler than Emma’s, and she moves to brush the hair from Charles’ face. He can tell she is rather kind when she is not angry, her features have that splendent, elfish way about them. She spares Charles a soothing smile, a hand tangling in his hair to cup the back of his head, and lets him hiccup into the warm wool draped across her chest.

“You would hurt a _child?_ ” she demands.

“Not a child,” Emma corrects, barreling on hotly. “Nothing more than a weed. A fairy born into night?” She scoffs again, flicking her wings out as she sniffs. “The only flowers known to bloom then are _nightlock_. And that means – he’s poison. Moira, you’re a silly twit if you allow him near the others.”

And she – the other fairy’s jaw sets tight at the words. Charles corrects this to _Moira, Moira who will protect me and is much more beautiful than the white fairy, yes, because she is kind and has bits of colorful flower woven in her lovely hair._

“Emma, we’re not doing this again. He’s a child just like any other. We do _not_ turn away children, and that is final. Leave. Or do you wish to wake them so early?” Moira’s tone brokers no argument, and at those last few words, the white fairy’s mouth pinches in irritation.

She turns to go, giving Charles a long, distasteful onceover, and flutters off.

“Ssh, shh,” Moira hushes him, though he is no longer hiccupping and has since fallen silent. She grips the sides of his face, pushes her hands back through his hair, then brings them to cup his cheeks and the subtle curve of his jaw. “Are you hurt? I’m sorry, youngling. Emma hasn’t been allowed around the children in years, and I don’t know why now she thinks –” She cuts herself off, blows out a breath. It tickles where it hits the bridge of Charles’ nose, and he wrinkles it.

“Come now,” Moira soothes. She hunches so she can hold Charles’ hand and guide him toward the center of the tree and the shadowed enclave hidden within. “I’m Moira. You don’t have to worry when I’m around, all right?” Moira’s wings are a vibrant shade of orange, tiny freckles of crimson stark against the dark fan of veins. He brushes his much smaller wing against one of hers, slightly cautious, though the action earns him one of her sweet smiles.

“Watch your step,” she warns quietly as they approach one of the nests. There are three other bodies curled in the small space. They slot together almost like puzzle pieces, easy and warm, a pile of leaves covering the dimmed glows of their wings. It’s a peaceful sight, one that has Charles yawning and perhaps now in need of sleep as well, as the night’s events pull at him and he realizes how tiring it all was. He lets Moira clear a spot amongst the other children for him, and he slips into it without hesitation.

She moves as if to leave, but bends down, quick, and settles a chaste kiss against his temple. “Sleep well, youngling. A new day is ahead of you.”

As soon as Moira has flittered off into the dark, the nests fall quiet, and Charles turns on his side to hug his knees to his chest. A smaller fairy is fast asleep in front of him, snuffling softly where a leaf obscures most of its face.

He’s only just allowed himself to consider nodding off to a dreamless sleep when he hears the gentle rasp of a body shifting against the stiff branches.

Tentatively, a palm settles between his shoulderblades. The fingers are thin and long, the skin warm.

“Hi,” shy, and then, quieter, “Did Emma hurt you, too?”

There had been tension in Charles shoulders, a certain apprehension that made his wings feel stiff and uncomfortable, and it dissolves that next moment, a silent signal that has the fairy lying behind him pushing closer.

“No,” he whispers. It seems rather useless to turn his head to face someone he can’t see; he closes his eyes and doesn’t move. “She isn’t very nice, is she?”

“No.”

The palm slides downward along his spine, between the ridges where his wings protrude from the bone. When the fingers begin to spread, they apply the slightest pressure to his skin. “You’re not like me,” the fairy says. She—because she is indeed female—still speaks in a whisper, but her voice carries clear and strong, her tone coloring with something like confusion. “You feel too smooth.”

“Not like you?” Charles puts up with the gentle prodding for another moment longer. The fairy is smaller, to say the least, and she brings her front almost flush against him, only an inch between their nest-warmed bodies. She drops her hand from his back, and Charles quietly misses the contact.

Some shuffling, and then another rasp against the branches, and the press of the other child is now two points of contact, her knees against his lower back. Charles looks over his shoulder, though with the darkness he still sees nothing aside from the general, blobby shape of things. The girl is sitting up, is all he can devise.

A soft _snick_ fills their tiny corner of the nest, drowned out in the next second by a yellow glow. The first thing Charles registers is that she’s _blue_. Not a faint shade like Charles’ wings, either. Her blue is deep and endless, a royal color that beseeches upon the color of her eyes – a truly astounding yellow, brighter than any daffodil or suntouched tulip may hope to turn. Her color is beleaguering, endearing, and Charles immediately thinks it quite lovely.

“See?” She smiles at Charles, a touch sad. The glow goes out, slow, comes back again. It comes from a firefly that has crawled up into her arms, the odd appendage hidden beneath its wings lighting up intermittently as they watch each other.

“Oh,” Charles breathes, after a touch, “how beautiful.”

Her eyebrows furrow and a frown tugs at the corners of her lips. The movement pulls at the scales that fan across her cheeks and skin. Charles dithers over that detail, taking his time to look at all of them, because there are many, and he finds them just as wonderful as their color. There’s a darker dusting of them across the breadth of her shoulders where her hair falls in long, luminous curls.

“Beautiful?” She shakes her head, and the expression that crosses her young face is something like devastation. And the realization of it, that alone squeezes the breath from Charles’ chest. The girl tries to cover it, snorting in a weak approximation of the white fairy’s brusque mannerisms. Her lower lip quivers. “That’s not what Emma said.”

Charles pushes himself up and crosses his legs. He smiles, leans forward so that he can keep his words hushed. “Well, we’ve established she’s mean. Her opinion shouldn’t count for much, either, then.”

His wings flick with each word, emphasizing, but that doesn’t do much beyond make the other child giggle. She catches herself with a hand on her mouth, but her eyes are alight with it. The firefly in her lap chirps and rubs up against her bare chest. It doesn’t much mind her scales, it almost seems to adore her, really.

“I’m Charles.” Unsure what to do, he offers his hand out to her.

She smiles again, a small upturn of her mouth, and Charles imagines she might be blushing beneath the scales.

“Raven.” She touches her fingertips against his, and it feels momentous, that moment, curling towards eachother in their allotted space in the dark. The bedding is piled around them, though it is little protection from the cold that bites at their naked skins, and Charles almost considers abandoning this to hundle down beneath the leaves like the others. He doesn’t.

The glow dies out again, comes back, catching on the bright red of Raven’s wings. They’re beautiful, much like the rest of her. Unique, and mesmerizing, where they fade into the same color blue as her skin at the tips. Charles wants to trace the veins with his fingers.

They talk for a small while longer, until the firefly finally decides to leave Raven’s lap and flies off. They speak of the things they’ve seen, the wonder of morning that Raven cannot fully put into words, the beauty of night Charles finds so compelling, his nightlock blossom and the blue-thorned bush from which Raven came.

“Charles, are we not like the other fairies?” They’re lying down now, willing themselves to fall into sleep, willing to stave it off some time longer. Charles turned so he could wrap his arms around the smaller child, and hope to keep her that much warmer for it.

He responds with a huff and knocks his head against hers. “Would it be so bad if we were? I think I like the way I am,” He’s pudgier in more places than Raven is, rounder in others, and his wings are nowhere near as brilliant, but he’s not ashamed of it, and Raven shouldn’t be, either, “I like the way _you_ are, just fine.”

Raven nudges him back. “I like you, too.”

Their conversation falls quiet again, their breathing loud against the pervading silence. Then, “Charles, can I ask you something?”

Charles presses his nose into Raven’s hair. It smells of something close to lilac and faintly of pollen.

“Are you my family?” She sounds... hopeful. Her words are slightly lilting, a question she may have been afraid to ask until just this moment.

He’s familiar with the question; it’s the same thing he had asked of the sparrows only hours before. Surely family, to a fairy, meant the species, or for them, the fairies of the garden. But there, with his body curving to take shape around hers, it feels like something more.

Raven’s hand brushes at his jaw, reaching back to trail fingers along the bone, and she feels it when he nods. “Yes, Raven. I am.”

This, he thinks, their first secret, can be kept just between them.

*

The weather is favorable in the coming month. It is too early in the season for the heat to fully settle, too late for the cold to do anything but give way to cooler days and nights, and all of the time in the world to do as a young fairy pleases.

In that way, Charles spends all of it that he can with Raven.

After that first night, some unspoken promise formed between them; though fairy are not meant to attach themselves to a single individual and are discouraged from doing so - fairies, the children are told, care too much and too fiercely to allow themselves such vulnerability - they treat each other much like how the birds of the garden treat their nestmates. They are careful of it, though, and spend only precious few hours alone together, in the back of the garden where few fairy linger.

It is there they learn of eachother; of Charles’ unending curiosity and Raven’s uncanny ability to call fireflies to her with not so much as word.

In the intervening hours of the passing days, when they’re not suffering through their lessons, Charles comes to enjoy the company of Sean, another of the children that was born the same day as he and Raven, and the older fairy he had met his first night, Moira.

But with the good weather inevitably come humans, and the first of the lessons the young fae will learn. A small family lives in the cottage at the front of the garden, two towering, monstrous creatures the fairy call _adults_ , _dangerous, be wary_ _of them_ _younglings_ , and a smaller human that, to Charles’ surprise, is no more than a child himself.

Charles first hears of them from Moira early one morning, when she had promised to teach Charles how to gather nectar from the honeysuckles that grow from beneath the cottage’s foundation. It is a tedious process that only a few of the more skilled fairies have mastered, and Charles is eager to learn it as well. Of course, most fairy prefer flowers that are easier to harvest, the fruits and berries that grow deeper in the garden, but Charles has to wonder where the _adventure_ is in that.

Honeysuckle only grows near the humans, and Charles, perhaps naïve in this respect, is curious of _all_ things human. He really cannot help himself.

The thickest of the vines crawls along the stone steps that lead down from the back of the cottage, where the shape of the house curves just so and provides a shaded alcove. The honeysuckles have only recently begun to bloom, and it’s a lovely sight that greets Charles as he zips along after Moira.

She’s been patient with him all morning, a morning which started at dawn, as Charles hadn’t been able to sleep a minute more. Moira had just rolled her eyes and set to gathering the supplies they would need – bags to carry the nectar back in along with a few hollowed-out reeds.

Charles’ bag hangs low over his shoulder, a hand cupped in front of it to keep it snug against his hip. He comes to a stop when Moira does, and he’s already reaching to pull his breeches up where they’ve slipped down his back. They’re a size too big; some other fairy’s hand-me-downs, much like the white linen shirt he finds himself always wearing despite the sleeves running past his fingers.

Moira gives the area one slow sweep before she moves forward into the alcove. She is looking out for animals, squirrels or snakes or something larger they might not want to disturb this early. She’s certainly not keeping an eye out for _humans_ \- just yesterday, Emma had given the children a lecture on how humans cannot see fairies, and that fairyfolk should be thankful for this because humans would surely use the knowledge of magic to harm others as well as themselves. Charles feels a bit sick at the thought, that anyone couldn’t _see_ him. Because for all of Emma’s unkind words, humans cannot possibly be all that bad. They are the ones who created the garden, after all.

Mushrooms litter the sodden dirt beneath the vines and scraggly brush, both small and large with red, white-spotted caps. Charles and Moira flutter down to one big enough for both of them and sit together in the shade. The flight was long, and despite his abundance of energy earlier, now Charles wants nothing more than to rest his wings for an entire week. He wheezes for a minute, idly kicking his legs where they hang over the edge of the mushroom, then brushes his shoulder against Moira’s.

She passes him a strip of leaf from her bag that she had soaked with water before they left. It’s a little warm when he brings it to his lips, but he doesn’t much mind. He means to thank her, but after another moment ticks by, he asks instead, “Is what Emma said about humans true?”

Moira squints at something in the distance and moves to wipe a trickle of water from her chin. “Emma?” She frowns, tilting her head slightly, but then she seems to remember something. “She went on another one of her rants the other morning, didn’t she?”

“She said humans can’t see us.”

“Yes, well, they can’t. But they also can.” Moira nods sagely, and when Charles hands the leaf back, she folds and tucks it back into her bag. “They’re like fairies when they’re born. Their innocence is said to be purer than any other creature, but as they grow older the world changes them, and they lose it. The young have the capacity to believe in magic. They see us. But after, when they no longer believe...”

Charles looks out to where her gaze is focused, somewhere in the distance, and makes a curious sound beneath his breath. He doesn’t want to sound too eager, or like he cares all that much for her answer, but –

“And after?”

“The magic takes everything they once knew in order to protect our kind, keep it secret.” She waves a hand, indicating everything but also nothing at all. “Then you know, humans can’t see or remember us.”

The first thing that almost leaves his mouth is _how can you be so..._ fine _with that_. So blasé, and detached.

“You must think I’m terrible,” she says suddenly, turning to catch his eye. Her wings flick in an attempt to dispel her agitation. “Honest, Charles, I wish I could change how things are. I wondered the same things as you my first spring. But, can you even imagine, how it would feel to become friends with someone, to come to truly care for them, and then one day they simply forget about you and everything that came before?”

She shakes her head. “It’s in our nature to care too much. Better to distance ourselves than become so vulnerable.”

And Charles really can’t. Imagine it, that is. He wonders what it would feel like if Raven forgot him, one day his sister and the next a stranger, someone who wouldn’t want to be near him, lovely in all that she is. It makes his cheeks warm, and his eyes – wet. He looks away before Moira sees, wipes at them with the end of his too-long sleeve.

Yes, it would bring him no small amount of grief.

Abruptly, Moira stands. “Enough of that, let’s get to it. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a taste of fresh honeysuckle nectar.” She smiles at him, though there’s still a touch of unhappiness there, and Charles leaves it at that.

The honeysuckles grow in odd clusters of four or five, scattered here and there along the vines that hang above them. The flowers are a brilliant golden color that appears dull in the shade, and Charles spares a moment wishing the sun was higher so that he could better appreciate them. They fly to one of the clusters and hover there as Moira sets about demonstrating the best way to get at the nectar – a complex set of steps that requires steady hands and patience. Mostly, though, it involves pulling the largest petal back, getting the tip of the hollow reed in the right place, and then sucking the nectar out through the space between the stamens. By the time Moira has filled her bag, her arms are coated in it up to her elbows, and she smells strongly of the honeysuckle’s sweet fragrance.

Charles is shakier in his movements as he copies the process on another of the flowers. More nectar ends up down the front of his shirt than in the bag, and it frustrates him more than he’s willing to admit. Moira has to step in, settling hands on his elbow and wrist to guide him. After, he fairs much better.

They finish quickly, what amounts to under just an hour, and prepare to head back to the center of the garden where most of the fae nests are hidden amongst the largest trees. Charles is excited to bring what he’s gathered back to Raven. Really, hers is the only opinion he cares for.

The two fairies flutter out of the shade and into the open. To their side, the cottage steps loom above them, steeped in the shadow cast by the roof. They are about to fly around it when a loud noise sounds from behind the door at the top of the steps. Immediately, Charles realizes it must be _footsteps_ , just on the other side. He makes to move closer, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Moira is on him in a second, a hand on his arm, and she pulls him back. “No, Charles. We have to _hide_.” She squeezes, once, and releases him. “Come on!”

She takes off toward the honeysuckle vines and disappears in the leaves.

Charles hesitates; he’s still hovering in the open when the cottage door is pushed outward. A human child trudges out onto the stoop, and though the weather today is fair, sweetly warm, it is dressed head to toe in thick woolen clothing. The child shuffles toward the first of the stone steps, then turns to look back into the cottage when someone calls through the open doorway.

“Hank!” Heavy footsteps. Another human rushes out with something hanging from its hands. “Hank, you need your scarf!”

“Mama, I’m _fine_ ,” the child whines, going a touch red in the face. It tries to brush the adult human’s hands away without much success. The scarf ends up wrapped twice around its neck and face like a particularly cozy snake.

The humans are beautiful in the same way fairies can be; a surprise, given that humans are more outwardly similar to fairies than Charles could have guessed – they only lack the wings.

The adult must be what Charles has been told is a _parent,_ the child’s mother. Her skin is a darker shade than the boy’s, duskier, and her hair is dark and long where his is brown and short. Charles cocks his head at the sight; he’d been told about human children looking like their parents, not a flower they were born from, and it strikes him as odd that these two humans do not share very many physical characteristics, if at all.

“I don’t want you out here for too long,” the adult says, and she brushes a hand through the child’s unruly hair. “You’ll catch a spring chill.”  Her gaze sweeps across the place where Charles hovers, a good distance below in the alcove, but it passes over him.

“ _Mama_ ,” the child says. She only frets a moment more before going back inside the cottage. The child doesn’t move until the door closes. He waits, sighs loudly, then begins to make his way down the steep steps.

Charles panics and dives into a leafy trellis that hangs from the stair railing. Not his finest moment, but his heart is thundering in his chest, and he hadn’t expected the human to move _toward_ him. When the child makes it to the bottom step he thumps down on it and, at a glacial pace, begins peeling off two layers of gloves from his hands.

The boy looks sad, almost. He pulls his lower lip into his mouth, chews at it, and when he’s done with his gloves he moves to fiddle with the too-big glasses perched on his nose. Fairies don’t age the same way as humans, but Charles has the sudden thought that the child does not look much older than he and Raven.

“This is ridiculous,” Charles mutters, watching the human from behind a large leaf, “I’m going to say hello.”

He creeps out slowly and tucks his wings close to quiet them – he doesn’t want to scare the human. More importantly, he’s unsure how to approach a creature that likely has no knowledge of his species’ existence. But by now its par for the course that Charles acts first, considers later. Just like that, he lands on the child’s knee.

“Ah!” The human yelps, flinching back. For a long moment he blinks blearily at Charles, then he grabs the glasses from his nose and rubs at them with the end of his scarf. When he’s cleaned them thoroughly enough, he jams them back on his face and yelps again. “ _Ah!”_

A bemused smile curls Charles’ lips. He’s made his hands into fists at his sides, the fine material of his sleeves sweaty between his fingers, and he lifts both of them to wave in the human’s wide-eyed face. He flicks his wings for good measure.

“Hullo, what’s your name?”

“You,” the human wheezes, “You’re _real?”_

Charles couldn’t name the emotion on the human’s face at first. It starts slow, something caught between terror and confusion, but now he believes it to be _yearning_ that creeps into the human’s voice. He finds it almost as fascinating as the human’s enormous face, sitting a short distance away as the boy leans in close.

“Of course I’m real,” Charles tells him. “I’m a fairy.”

That startles an awkward giggle out of the boy. He quickly sobers. “You’re just imaginary. Mama said so.”

Charles plops down, moving his legs to dangle over the edge of the boy’s knee. He lifts one hand and lets the sleeve slip down to his wrist, wiggles his fingers. “Could I do this if I wasn’t real?” The fairy cocks his head. “How would your parent know, anyway?”

“She has books,” is all the boy declares, nodding as if that were enough, “fairytales. When I asked her about them, she said it was all make-believe.”

“I’m make-believe?” Charles’ laugh is high-pitched and soft. “ _You’re_ make-believe. I’ve never met a human before.”

The boy frowns, finally breaks his gaze away and casts it out into the garden. “I’ve never met a fairy before, either, but I make-believe all the time.” Then, tucking his chin down into his scarf, he whispers, “I’m imagining you right now.”

An idea strikes the fairy, and he reaches into his pants-pocket to pull out a seed, which he then presents to the human. “But could you imagine this?” He cups both his hands around the seed, which is nearly half the size of his hand and fits snugly between his palms. With a press of magic into its shell, he opens his hands again in a small flourish. The seed begins to crack and grow, creeping up towards the human’s face as it sprouts leaves, and at the very top, a vibrant blossom.

“You,” the boy says intelligently, swallowing. He hesitates, but at Charles’ nod, gently plucks the little flower from the fairy’s hands. The boy brings it to his nose to smell it, before flushing. “You _are_ real. And this,” he presses the flower against his nose again, “this smells really good. You have to be real.” He seems dazed by the realization.

Charles smiles again, “Yes. I’m Charles.”

“Hank,” the boy supplies, still dazed. There’s something like happiness lighting up his eyes. “Oh man, fairies are _real_. I knew those books were telling the truth.” He pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose where they’ve slipped down; tentatively, he holds out a single finger toward Charles. The fairy grabs ahold of it with both hands and shakes.

“Can we –“ Hank stops, rubs at the back of his neck where he’s sweating beneath the scarf. “Are we friends, now?” The first smile Charles gets from him is sweet and belies the human’s youth. It’s small, and turns a touch sad. “I’ve never had a friend before.”

Charles doesn’t even hesitate. “Of course! I think I’d like to have a human for a friend.” He slants a grin Hank’s way, kicking out with his feet. “I have a sister, Raven. I’m sure she would love to meet you.”

The boy’s nod is enthusiastic, more of a bounce than anything else. “Me too! Love to meet her, I mean.”

It makes Charles warm inside, to know anyone could feel that way about Raven. He cannot be the only one to see how wonderful she is, and she certainly needs to hear it from someone other than Charles. His wings flutter with excitement, because humans aren’t bad after all, and now he can call one a friend. And oh, Hank is so wonderfully kind. Charles can tell. The human has the same worldly curiosity that Charles has, if the way he looks at Charles’ wings in such awe is any indication, and he just _knows_ that they’ll get along splendidly. Someone else that thinks and cares the way _Charles_ does, well, isn’t that something.

Hank reaches his hand forward, an aborted move, perhaps wanting to touch Charles’ wings. Charles won’t say no, as long as Hank is gentle – obviously, the boy doesn’t appear capable of anything less – but before the words can leave his mouth, he’s interrupted by a loud yell somewhere off to their right. It’s – _Moira_. She comes barreling out of her hiding place in the vines.

_Oh no,_ Charles realizes, _she was there the whole time, wasn’t she?_ She must’ve overheard their entire conversation, or worse, she didn’t, and thinks Hank is going to _hurt him_.

Moira is already flying towards them with frightening speed. “Don’t touch him!”

The hand Hank had been inching toward Charles jumps back as if burned. Just in time; Moira is at once in the poor boy’s face, cheeks flushed and furious. Her face is hard when she says, “You better not have hurt him or I swear –“

“Moira!” Charles is on his feet now, and he scowls at her when she spares him a glance. She double-takes, frowning back at him. “Honestly, Moira, Hank wouldn’t harm me. He’s very kind.” He gives Moira one of his brighter smiles, the one that usually helps him get away with anything when it comes to her, and most other fairies as well. “He promised not to tell anyone about us, and,” Charles widens his eyes, plaintive, “he wants to be my friend.”

“You do promise, right?” Charles turns his focus back to the boy. “No one can know that fairies are real. You’re a special case.”

“Yeah, yes, of course,” the boy says in a hurried jumble.

Charles claps his hands together and flutters up to join Moira.

“Charles,” she hisses, her eyes wide when he reaches her, “This is against the rules. We can’t trust humans.”

The young fairy makes a show of contemplating this, pulling his lower lip into his mouth and dusting another glance over Hank. The boy’s face had fallen at Moira’s words.

“Didn’t you say though,” Charles says softly, “that human children share our innocence? The rule doesn’t count for him.”

Moira looks over at the boy as well, suddenly unsure. “It... shouldn’t. But Charles,” and she turns to him, gives him a minute shake of her head, “you remember what I said earlier? If you do this, it can’t – it won’t –”

“I know,” Charles murmurs. He gives her a slow smile, and hope she sees it for what it is: acceptance, maybe, but also determination.

Sidling closer to the human boy, Moira bends forward to catch his eye, his head hanging as it is with his focus somewhere in his lap.

“Forgive me,” she says with an errant curtsy. Her wings patter against the air, the sound like raindrops hitting leaves. “I didn’t mean to startle you, child. Our experiences with humans being what they are, I hope you understand.”

The boy looks up, and there’s a ruddy flush on his cheeks, a fainter red around his eyes where he may have been about to cry. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I understand.” Hank turns his head to Charles, giving the fairy a tentative smile. “I won’t tell, I swear. And I wouldn’t – would never – hurt you.”

Charles smiles back, encouraging, and the boy has to look away to hide his blush. “I don’t like violence,” he finishes.

After another moment, Moira seems to deflate. She flies back toward the tangle of olive bushes that mark the path into the innermost part of the garden, a little ways from the steps.

“I really should be getting back. Charles, you’re not the only fairy I’m teaching today, you know.” She plucks at the strap of her bag and pushes it around her hip. To Hank, she says, “You’re welcome to join us any time in the garden, though I must warn you not all fairies will take so kindly to humans. I suggest sticking to the area outside the grove of trees where we keep our nests. Charles will show you the way.”

She gives Charles another look, quirking an eyebrow. “Raven should be done with her lessons for the morning, though I expect you won’t keep her from them too long.” There’s a bit of the usual authority laced into her tone, specifically, the _don’t get carried away with your shenanigans_ one she reserves for Charles more often than Raven. Of course, he can only assume she’ll berate him if he thinks a new friend means getting off their evening lessons.

With that Moira is gone, and Charles and Hank are left alone on the bottom step of the cottage. The morning is still fairly new, the sunlight that filters through the trees at the back of the cottage soft and pale, and the air is filled with the fragrance of a great many of the flowers that line the small clearing, the strongest being the sweet honeysuckle - the nectar Charles still carries in his own bag. Its pleasantly cool out, which - leads Charles to pluck at Hank’s scarf, fruitless as it would be for the fairy to pull it from the human’s neck.

“Aren’t you warm enough?” he asks, digging his tiny hands in the gargantuan folds of the fabric. “Take this off. And your coat! Really, it’s much too nice a day for all this.”

Hank tries to swat at him, but there’s no force behind it, and he really only ends up sending Charles a wingbeat backwards with the small gust of air his hand stirs up. The boy sighs. “It’s not that, just - my mama cares too much about these things. She’s _super_ weird, like, won’t even let me step outside in the winter because she thinks I’ll get sick.”

“Winter?” Charles cocks his head. “I’ve heard about that. What’s it like?”

For a long minute Hank stares at Charles, askance. Slowly, he asks, “You don’t know what winter is? The cold?”

The fairy lands on Hank’s knee again, flexing his wings in and out. He shakes them, frowning consideringly. “No? I was born this spring, and the elders say winter isn’t until the season after next.”

An expression of shock crosses Hank’s face. Then, “Wow, you’re younger than I am! And you already look the same age, and can talk! That’s so cool.” The boy wipes his sweaty palms on the front of his coat and moves to push his glasses back up his nose. “Humans age a lot slower.”

Charles laughs. “I’m told we live longer, too.”

“Huh.” Hank begins unraveling his scarf, revealing the pale, sweaty skin hidden beneath. “We’re different, but also really similar. This is... fascinating.” The boy breathes the last word almost reverently and nods decisively. “As a scientist, I’m happy to take note of these findings.”

“What’s a scientist?” Charles walks along Hank’s thigh, until he has to crane his neck to meet the boy’s eyes.

“Oh, it’s - someone who finds things - I think?” Hank scratches at the back of his head.

“Well, you’ve found me. Or I found you.” Charles smiles again. “As a scientist, would you like to go find my sister now?”

The boy pushes to his feet so fast Charles barely has time to catch himself with his wings. He huffs. “I’m guessing that’s a yes? I’ll be sure to tell her how enthusiastic you were to meet her when you find yourself unable to get rid of her.” He gives Hank a devilish grin. “The both of us, actually.”

Hank divests himself of his remaining layers - the coat, a fluffy hat, and an extra pair of gloves. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his pants and takes the distance from the steps to the path into the garden in long, excited strides.

“Come on!” he calls to Charles, still busying himself with the bag of nectar at his hip. “We only have until evening, she said!”

“Hold on, hold on!” Charles speeds after the boy, zipping past his face in a streak of blue, laughing loudly as he does so.

The human laughs right back, giddy, and the two of them hurry along down the dirt path.

“Lead the way!”

*

A few nights later, long after the children have been tucked into their nests for bed, Charles is stirred awake. He does not know why, or how, at first, in that groggy way most struggle when torn from a pleasant dream – in this particular one, Charles had been a fish swimming endlessly through bright, clear waters. But the bite of the night air rouses him soon enough, and he opens his eyes to find his face pressed into the arc of Raven’s neck, where his hot, sleep-warmed breaths have made the pocket of air there moist and suffocating.

His sister is still fast asleep when he checks. He considers, immediately, rolling over and calling back the phantom touch of a smooth current against his skin, useless as it would prove, because whatever woke him must have been some fluke. Charles notes with sleepy annoyance that none of the others appear to have woken, either.

It isn’t until he’s made himself comfortable again, dragged the leaves up over his chest and closed his eyes, that a muted sound carries up from somewhere below the branches.

Charles sits up on his elbows. It’s dark, too dark to see much of anything, as the fireflies tend to congregate in different parts of the garden and the moon is no more than a barely-there sliver tonight. Still, the fairy pokes his head over the edge of the nest.

He’s almost sure he had imagined it, but then, it carries up to him again, the whisper of leaves chafing together.One of the animals that roam the garden, perhaps, though why anyone would be awake this late, he has no mind.

He makes a conscious effort to dim the glow of his wings as he extracts himself from the warmth of the leaves. His curiosity has gotten the best of him again. It stands to reason that he should solve the mystery; now that he’s awake it would only keep him up all night, burning with a question that would never be answered.

Charles makes short work of fluttering down to the ground. The tree is tall and thick, an old oak surrounded by wild-growing strawberry bushes. The brush is overgrown this deep into the garden, unchecked by the humans in the cottage – the way the fairies prefer it – and Charles finds it even harder to see amongst the crowd of so many leaves.

There’s movement somewhere behind him, he can feel it in the way the leaves shiver and press against him. Charles tucks his wings down and turns just in time to catch the shape of something tall, _huge_ , disappear briefly into one of the bushes at the base of the oak. It emerges soon after, its gestures indistinguishable in the dark.

The fairy steps forward quietly. He’s maybe four or five feet from whatever it is, and he refuses to let his fear show.

Then Charles makes the mistake of bringing his wings forward and brightening their glow. His glow isn’t brilliant, nor is it the brightest, but against the darkness the contrast is stark, impossible not to notice. And whatever the creature is, it notices.

“ _Get away_ ,” a low voice hisses. Charles is on the ground still, his wings angled to cast their glow upward over the figure before him. It’s a – a _boy_. Another human child, knees down in the dirt. The boy is caught midway from pulling a handful of strawberries from one of the bushes, and if the stained, lumpy knapsack held securely in his lap is any indication, he has collected quite a lot of them. The faint light catches in the boy’s pale eyes, which reflect it back at Charles like those of something nocturnal, _vicious_.

“Shoo!” The boy swats at Charles. “ _Husch, husch!”_

Charles jumps back in time to avoid the boy’s hand. His heartbeat escalates, thrumming in his chest, and he doesn’t want to risk taking any more steps back, let alone forward. “It’s all right,” Charles tells the boy, hushed and more than a little alarmed. He gets the words out in a rush. “I’m not going to do anything. You were making noise and it woke me. I just wanted to see what was causing it.”

The boy’s face remains grave and hard, his lips tucked down in the corners at sharp, unhappy angles. Slowly, the boy places the strawberries in his hand into the knapsack.

“I don’t believe you,” the boy says, something like a warning in his tone, though Charles is too fascinated by the strange quality of his accent to pay it much attention.

Charles shrugs. His wings twitch. “I’m a fairy,” is what he says in response.

The boy stares at him for a long moment, scrutinizing. “I don’t care what you are,” he says, slow in the way some of the elders speak to the fae children, as if they are particularly uncomprehending, or stupid. “I’m taking this fruit.”

That surprises Charles, maybe just a bit, because he hadn’t intended to stop the boy from taking anything. The fairies are generous with the abundant food in the garden, they never keep it selfishly, but more importantly, the boy is clearly hungry. He is worryingly thin, his cheekbones pronounced and his eyes drawn and shadowed, though the rest of his body is buried beneath dark, patchy clothing.

Again, Charles does not know how to respond. He dithers. “Okay.”

If possible, the boy’s eyes narrow further. He’s drawn up as if raising his hackles, and clearly means to snarl, before he catches himself and goes back to plucking fruit from the bush. The boy _hmphs,_ says lowly, “Don’t try to stop me.”

Instead of responding like he wants – _why would I?_ – Charles keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t move. He wants to watch the boy, learn everything he can about him, because the boy is... intriguing. Charles had expected a response much like Hank’s to the existence of fairies, though he can’t say he’s had any similar encounters prove evidence to such. Maybe Hank is an outlier. Maybe, Charles thinks, as he tracks the clinical, precise movements of the boy’s long fingers as they comb over the bush, this human is an outlier.

It’s not long before the boy stops and tests the weight of the knapsack. He ties the top closed, hauling it over his shoulder and rising to his feet in a single graceful move. The boy steps right over Charles and starts walking into the darkness, away from the tree. His strides are long and fast and Charles is at once struggling to fly after him.

“Wait!” Charles dips down, curls up around the boy’s body to hover an inch from his face. “You’re leaving? You haven’t even told me your name!”

A growl rumbles in the boy’s throat. His eyes aren’t quite so pale this close to Charles’ glow, the cold grey of storm clouds shot through, impossibly, with green. His lashes are long, _lovely_ , when they come down to brush against his cheeks.

“I’m leaving,” the boy amends. “And _you’re_ in my way.”

Charles sticks his hand out. He’s so close his fingers nearly brush the boy’s nose. “I’m Charles, and you are?”

“Annoyed.”

“Do you live around here,” Charles ploughs on, dropping his hand. “I haven’t met very many humans.” One, actually. Though Charles doesn’t mention that part.

The boy sighs, the sound drawn out, and rolls his eyes sharply. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Sorry, it’s just, you’re the first human I’ve met who isn’t... surprised. By my being a fairy.”

When the boy starts walking again, Charles has to quickly fly out of his way.

“Forgive me for being practical about it,” the boy says through his teeth. His jaw flexes as he works to unclench it.

“You could stay a little longer.” Charles trails after him, stubborn as ever. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”

“I don’t _want_ to be caught stealing, if it’s all the same to you. Are all fairies this,” and the boy says the word with unguarded disdain, “ _naïve_.”

Charles strengthens his resolve. “I’m just curious, is all.”

That stops the boy in his tracks, and he turns to glare at Charles. “And it’ll get you killed, if you don’t know what’s good for you.” He turns around again. “Stop following me.”

“I just...,” Charles trails off, voice growing quiet. It’s dark, and not so warm here, outside of his nest. The boy, much less so. He doesn’t even know why he must know, just that – he _has_ to. Maybe the boy is lonely. “Can I at least know your name? Please? I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”

Without Charles realizing it, they’ve reached a section of the wall on the border of the garden. It stretches high above the fairy, monstrous, but for the human boy, it is a mere foot or two higher than his head. The boy bounces the knapsack over his shoulder, tightens his grip. He reaches forward to brush some of the ivy from the wall, enough to uncover holes where pieces of the stone have fallen out or crumbled.

Footholds. The boy is looking for footholds.

Charles says nothing else as he watches the boy climb the wall, surprised by the ease with which he does. It’s almost as if the boy has done so many times before, though Charles knows he would’ve seen him in the garden before, or at least heard tell of it from the other fairies.

The boy reaches the top and sits there for a moment, looking off into whatever it is that lies on the other side. Slowly, he throws his gaze back down to where Charles remains, far below, a soft blue glow hovering at the base of the wall.

“Erik,” he finally says, a lack of intonation in his voice, his tongue going hard on the ‘k’. He says nothing else, and at once disappears over the edge.

It takes a long time for Charles to move. Not until his wings grow heavy does he consider returning to the warmth and comfort of his nest.

_Erik_ , his mind whispers, full of wonder and not without the slightest confusion, _his name is Erik_.

The boy is... abrasive - _dismissive_.

But, Charles realizes, gathering his arms close, he finds himself hoping Erik comes back.

*

The reason Raven takes so quickly to Hank is more a consequence of his shyness, and the lack of a backbone thereof, than anything else. He’s quiet, all the more attentive for it, and she admits to Charles, in those snatches of conversation they keep between themselves, that it’s knowing that, finally, someone is willing listen. Not to say that Charles doesn’t – because he tries his best. But the elders only see Raven as a nuisance, loud and impulsive as she can be, and the other fae children tend to avoid her.

That is to say, they don’t know how to even begin to handle her.

She’s quite loud and honest when she complains about the other fairies, and now, Charles thinks with some measure of guilt, she’s taken to complaining to Hank.

“Young Raven!” she pantomimes, an exaggeration of the tone Emma uses when lecturing the children, dripping with contempt. His sister’s hands are stuck at poised angles on her hips, and she straightens her spine, raising a hand to flick a finger through the air as she speaks. “Might I remind you that mud is for the ground, _not_ the trees. Clean this mess up at once!”

They’re in Hank’s room in his family’s cottage; aside from the bed, the small space is filled with several bookshelves, stuffed to the brim with old books and journals. Charles has since become accustomed to the musty air and underlying dust, though Raven can’t seem to go long without sneezing. He’s starting to suspect she’s doing it on purpose.

Hank has a book open on the desk that’s set into the window alcove, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he scribbles notes in the margins, and he doesn’t seem to be paying Raven much attention as she walks along the edge of the page he’s opened to. Charles watches on in amusement, perched on the handle of a nearby cup that’s filled with pencils and pens.

“Hank, you’re not even listening!” She ruffles her wings and climbs up onto the hand Hank isn’t writing with.

“Hmm? Yes, um, she is quite terrible, how do you even survive?”

“What are you looking at?” Raven huffs, grabbing ahold of his thumb and leaning over to see the page. “It better be actually interesting, and not another one of those encyclopedias you and Charles practically _drool_ over.”

When the three of them aren’t playing games in the garden, Hank likes to take them into the cottage and show them his many human things. There are some called ‘appliances’ that Hank says are powered by ‘electricity’ - an odd human approximation of magic, Charles can only assume; a tall box that keeps human food cold and a clear cup with silver teeth in it – that one Hank had called a blender, and looked amused as he shook his head at the two of them, for Raven and Charles refused to come close enough to look at it.

The books are another thing. Hank’s collection has steadily grown as the weeks passed, as the boy began collecting every book, journal, and encyclopedia he could get his hands on – “ _These_ ,” Hank had breathed quietly, the night he’d brought back two stacks of them, “ _are about_ _mythical creatures_.” More importantly, Hank has been searching for books on _fairies_. Frustrating as it is though, a single lick of information on fae is proving astoundingly elusive.

“I just don’t get it,” the boy says now, pushing his glasses back up his nose. He squints down at the page. “There’s nothing. This is the twelfth field guide I’ve looked at; I’ve even looked under sprites. You’re not mentioned _anywhere_.”

Charles cocks his head. “Humans can’t see us, how else would they know about fairies?”

“Because...,” Hank trails off, rubbing at an eye with a knuckle. His glasses slide back down his nose, and he sighs. “Because everything else is in here. Trolls, selkies, even _will-o-wisps_. You can’t be the only ones in hiding, but they’re all in here.” Hank closes the book with the hand he isn’t holding Raven in, picks it up to wave it at Charles, “I found this in an occult shop when papa took me to the market. No one believes in occult stuff, it’s all fake.”

Raven hums, considering. “What are trolls? They sound...,” she wrinkles her nose, “ugly.”

Hank flips the book open to a different page. This one has a black and white drawing taking up most of the space.

“Oh, _ew_ ,” Raven says.

On the boy’s other side, Charles drops down to the tabletop and stretches his arms above his head. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for it. You can’t know how many other species aren’t mentioned.”

Hank frowns slightly, but concedes. “Right.”

Suddenly, Hank pushes his chair away from the desk. “I forgot to show you guys something, actually. Here let me get it.”

He goes over to the stacks of books shoved into the corner of the room, the ones that didn’t fit on the shelves, and grabs one off the top. When he brings it over, Charles wonders at how ragged and stained its cover is, the way the spine has splintered from the binding. It’s considerably thinner than many of the other books and almost falls apart by the small movement of Hank setting it down.

“This,” Hank says, “was in our attic. I think it was my mama’s, but a long time ago.” He draws a hand down the cover, and tilts it open to the first page – yellowed paper filled with words written in the awkward, slanted lines of a child’s hand.

“Look.” He gestures at a word that’s drawn in ink much darker than the others. “It says _Angel_ , that’s my mama’s name. And here, the next few pages are like a diary.” Hank flips through a dozen or so pages, until he lands on one that’s mostly blank, followed by a clumsy drawing of oddly-shaped figures surrounded by what look to be flowers – with green petals and orange leaves, Charles notes with amusement.

Charles and Raven step in close, leaning over Hank’s arm to peer down at the drawing. One is drawn in light brown, shaky and distorted in the way that Hank allots to crayons, with darker hair and a bright pink dress. The other is –  Charles blinks, then again, because the other one isn’t colored in, just an outline in black, a triangular dress and disproportioned _wings_ drawn around it.

“Is that _Emma_?” Raven asks, sounding breathless. She looks up at Charles, her eyebrows lost somewhere in her hairline.

Above them, Hank makes a small noise in his throat. “ _That’s_ Emma? But it – it can’t be, this must be over twenty years old. That’s not the point though. I’m not the only one – my mama saw fairies, too. And here, look,” he jabs a finger at the words written beneath the drawing. “ _Today we went to the pond and made a crown of flowers for my hair. My favorite are the blue ones_.”

Hank flips through the pages. There are more of them, the girl and a smaller character, always outlined in black with a scribble of yellow hair. “There’s no mention of a name,” Hank finishes, as he reaches the end of the diary entries, the rest of the pages blank. “It’s definitely a fairy though.” And then the boy laughs. “At least this means I’m not crazy.”

At Charles and Raven’s dual frowns, Hank hurries to add, “Not that I actually thought I was going crazy! It’s just that I couldn’t find anything on you guys at _all_.”

“That can’t be Emma.” Charles has to look away from the drawing Hank has turned to, of the little girl and the proposed fairy holding hands – a bright red heart drawn by an unsteady hand between them. He doesn’t pose it as a question to Raven, because she looks just as confused in that moment, quite like she might shriek at the very idea. Friends? With _Emma_? Charles has to agree with the sentiment. Perish the thought.

“It’s someone else,” Raven agrees. “Maybe they’re not around now. Maybe they died. Like Hank said, it was a long time ago.”

The subject seems to drop after that, but, quietly, Charles wonders just what it is that he’s missing.

“I guess I could do it myself,” Hank says next. He’s slouching back in his chair, eyes slanted down at his lap as he fiddles with his glasses. “I’ll take notes and put it all in a book, like an encyclopedia for fairies.”

A wistful smiles pulls at the boy’s mouth, and he glances up at Raven and Charles, once, before quickly looking away. “Maybe then, when I’m older, I won’t forget you guys. I’ll have it all written down.”

Charles feels his chest do something wretched, like someone has reached in and grabbed ahold of his heart, squeezing. “Hank...,” he starts, flying over to land on the boy’s shoulder. Tentatively, he touches a hand to his cheek.

Charles glances to Raven. She’s watching Hank quite sadly from the edge of the desk, her eyes glistening with unshed tears – at the thought of losing him, same as Charles – and when she catches Charles’ gaze, her expression shifts, and something passes between them.

“Hank, I think that’s a great idea,” Charles tells him, mustering up a rueful smile. “It might just work.”

The answering grin Hank gives the two fairies, well, that’s something they’ll just have to live with.

They continue in that way for a while after, the day falling away to late afternoon. Hank shows them the wealth of knowledge held within his human books, and they in turn assist him in finding an empty journal big enough to record everything he has since learned of the fairies.

Hank tries a few awkward drawings, but that mostly results in Raven’s teasing and uncontrollable giggling – _really, Hank, is that what I look like to you?_

The three of them tend to go on for hours like this, uninterrupted, but while Raven is in the midst of another peal of laughter, rolling on her back and dragging her wings along the grain of the desk while Hank looks on in horror, there’s a knock at the door. Almost immediately, it opens to reveal Hank’s mother standing in the doorway.

She looks – haggard, would be the appropriate word. Her fingers busy themselves in her hair as she tries to comb it into some semblance of neatness, and her eyes are tired and dark. This has only happened a time or two before: one of Hank’s parents coming upon them when they are together, unexpectedly. And just like the times before, his mother gives no indication that she sees Charles and Raven, nor does she appear to have heard Raven’s ridiculous laughter.

“Honey,” Hank’s mother – Angel, Charles recalls – says softly, as though she does not wish to be intrusive, “Your father tells me that we’re having – a guest. He’ll be here soon. Won’t you please come out and say hello to the kind man? He’s given us so much,” and there’s something there, a subtle hitch in her breath underlying the words. “We don’t want to be rude.”

Without moving from his desk, Hank turns his head to look at her. Confusion has his mouth curling down in the corners, his eyebrows furrowing. “Of course, mama,” and then, slower, he asks, “Who is it?”

Angel curls her hand into a tight fist on the doorknob. Her other hand has drawn her long, dark hair up into the beginnings of a bun, apparently given up keeping it in order. “It’s the high councilman,” she says simply, like that explains everything. “He’ll be here soon. Come out when you’re ready, okay, baby?”

“Yes, mama.”

As soon as Angel closes the door, Charles pipes up, “Who is that?”

It’s like a switch has been flipped; Hank is now uncharacteristically withdrawn and subdued. He stares down at Raven, who is still lying down on the desk with her hands folded neatly on her stomach, and worries his bottom lip.

“The councilman. He’s not –“ Hank breathes out noisily with his mouth. “He’s not, um, mean, exactly. I get this feeling around him? And it’s just – not a nice one.”

“That’s weird,” Raven says. Really, her contributions are always so insightful.

“Yeah,” Hank agrees. “I gotta go out there now and, I don’t know, act like he doesn’t give me the shivers.”

Charles flutters up to Hank’s chest, and when Hank procures the palm of one hand, he lands on it. “If you really think it’ll be that bad, Raven and I can go out there with you.” He nods decisively. “For moral support. It’s not like they can see us, anyway. All you have to do is not talk to us.”

The boy considers, for a moment, then shrugs. “Um, okay. I guess you can come.” He offers out his other hand for Raven, and moves the both of them to his shoulder before making for the bedroom door.

The hallways in the cottage are narrower than most, or so Hank had told them, and currently the lights are off in the bedrooms, leaving it dark. Hank heads toward the end of the hall, where the bright light from the kitchen seeps through the cracked door.

A voice floats through the opening as they approach. It’s Hank’s father: “Good to see you, councilman. How are things going at the capitol?”

Hank stops, lifts a hand to push the door open, but then he pauses - doesn’t. They remain there, listening in as muffled voices carry into the dark hall.

“Armando.” And _this_ voice, it’s – Charles can’t find the right way to describe it, but it’s like a drop of something cold running down the length of his spine. It’s pleasant, eerily so. “Things are going well, quite well.” The man – because it must be one, given the deep, jolly tone of the voice – chuckles, then. “For you as well, I presume?”

“Yes, we –”

“Hank, my boy,” the man cuts in, his tone still amiable and altogether too nice, but something goes taut beneath it, and Charles and Raven share a terrified look, because – _how did he know_ , “What on earth are you doing standing in that dreary hallway? I’d very much like to see how you’ve grown!”

There’s a moment between when Hank pushes opens the door and enters the kitchen, that, not even understanding why he does it, nor how he could even be thinking clearly enough to do so, Charles grabs Raven by the arm and drags her beneath the collar of Hank’s coat. He throws a hand over her mouth, effectively muffling any protest, and pushes her head underneath the material. They can just see past Hank’s hair from where Charles’ has hidden them, and the sight that greets them next is not at all pleasant.

Hank’s mother stands by the sink, her arms crossed over her chest and the inward curl of her shoulders undermining the wide stance she’s set with her hips. Another man, skin dusted an even darker shade than Angel’s, is sat at the table. This, Charles knows immediately, is Hank’s father. He’s got a warm smile on his face, though it doesn’t reach his eyes – not without trying, it appears – and he’s facing another man who is sitting just on the other side of the table with his back to the kitchen door.

Both of Hank’s parents look up as the boy enters the room, and, slower, though just behind them, the unnamed man turns in his chair to stare as well. The first thing Charles notices is the man’s age; he’s old, older than Hank’s parents by the looks of the grey streaks in his hair, and when Charles’ gaze slides down the man’s face, he has to fight down an inconsolable chill at the sight of the man’s shallow, beady eyes. And all Charles can think, throat catching, is that he never wants their attention, let alone sit back as they size Hank up, coolly assessing.

“Young McCoy,” the man says, a wide smile slanting across his face. He chuckles again. “Or should I say, young Muñoz, now? That’s right – you’ve grown so fast, haven’t you? It’s good to see, my boy. Always good to see.”

The room falls quiet, and Hank’s parents seem to be waiting for something. Hank swallows, a sound so loud with his skin pressed against Charles’ cheek, let alone as the only noise in the tiny kitchen. Then, in a jumble, Hank blurts, “Hi, councilman, howareyou?”

The man’s smile thins and slides wider, an eel – like the one Hank once showed them in a book – uncurling from a languid sleep. “Wonderful.” He clasps his hands beneath his chin, elbows propped on the back of his chair, and steeples his fingers. “Quite wonderful.” Then the man turns to study Angel. The breath of relief Hank releases is quiet, a soft intake of air. “A beautiful day, today. The garden is brilliant come spring, isn’t it?”

Angel opens her mouth, makes to say something in reply, but Armando cuts her off. “Yes,” he hurries to say, then slows down when he realizes he’s beat her. “Yes, it is. We can never thank you enough for that, councilman. You’ve gifted us with so much. Thank you - for your continued kindness.”

The man leans back in his chair now, and remarks, airily. “No thanks needed, you’ve served your due in full. It’s nothing in comparison to what I owe you, of course. Just keep that garden alive and beautiful and that is thanks enough.”

“Of course, sir,” Armando agrees.

“Now then, there’s a reason for this little visit of mine.” The man rises from his chair and moves to clasp Armando on the shoulder. “A favor, if you’re available,” the word rolls off his tongue as easy as his fingers tighten their hold. “A faithful subordinate deserves a just reward, don’t you think? I’ve been told he could use a good carpenter’s services - build him a lovely new set of furniture, or what have you. I only ask that it’s done... expediently.”

Armando nods. “And whom am I servicing?”

The man tilts his head, considering. “Lehnsherr. You’ll find he’s still in that same hobble of his in the night district. I’m sure you’ll recognize the area,” he says this with no small amount of pride, almost as if the man were gloating. “if you recall, dear Armando, not everyone can be quite as fortunate as you.”

A hint of guilt crosses Armando’s face before he can stop it, but he hides it away quickly. Armando breaks eye contact with the man, focuses on the undulating movement of his fist on the table as he unclenches it, spreads his fingers and brings them back into a fist again. “I’ll meet with him before the day is out,” he replies at length.

“Good.” Another squeeze on the shoulder, and the man’s hand is gone. “Now, I really must be off. I’ll send Janos over at some point in the coming week for a follow up, but do feel free to offer your talents as you see fit.”

Behind them, Angel frowns tightly at the back of the man’s head. Her jaw is clenched when she speaks up: “Say goodbye to Mr. Shaw, Hank.”

The man tilts a wave as he walks out the front door, and when it’s shut behind him, everyone in the room lets out a collective breath. Raven nudges Charles, and when he meets her eyes, her mouth is a watery, tense line, her face pale.

“That man,” she whispers. “He didn’t feel – _right_.” Her small hands are curled into the back of Hank’s shirt collar, and she’s nearly pressed her face into the soft hairs at the boy’s nape. Hank is barely breathing himself; the skin there is clammy with the beginnings of sweat.

Charles can’t disagree with her. Being in the same room for even a few minutes had been difficult. The man had just felt so _odd_ , and the malevolence that lurked there, behind those fake smiles and hollow laughter – none of it had ever reached his eyes.

Hank’s mother shoves off from the sink and stalks to the table. Accusation carries heavy in her voice when she says, “You let him walk all over us.”

“I don’t _let_ him do anything,” Armando snaps, then pauses, getting ahold of himself once again. “It’s not about allowing him, Angel, it’s about keeping our home, about not going back – _there_.” He’s breathing heavily now, his fist pressed tightly on the table. “He’ll send us back if I don’t do as he says, as much as he likes to pretend I have a choice.”

“We’d survive,” Angel bites back. “You always have, haven’t you? All those other families - Lehnsherr’s - they’ve been there all along, and they -”

Armando raises a hand to silence her, though it is not unkind. He finishes, “...are starving, dying in the streets. I know. I _know_.”

Charles finds it difficult to keep up with them; there’s something he’s missing, he just knows it. It’s the mention of humans going hungry, dying because of it, that has something clenching in his chest, and, instantly, he thinks of _Erik._ He’d been careful not to mention the strange boy’s appearance over two weeks ago, now, but the reality of it has the beginnings of an idea clicking into place. He can’t imagine, in that moment, that Erik snuck into the garden to steal fruit for any other reason than - a recollection, a flash of several images: the boy’s gaunt face, a feral edge sharpening behind green-grey eyes, crooked fingers and swollen knuckles - the boy had been half-starved, desperate, and could do very little about it save what he had the means to.

“And you’re going to give in? Just like that?” Angel wraps her arms around herself but continues to hold her ground.

In response, Armando laughs hollowly. “I don’t have a choice.”

Angel doesn’t say anything else. She stares at him for a long moment before turning back to the sink. She grabs a stack of plates and sets to washing them, every movement of her hands efficient and precise - to keep her from throwing them, from screaming, most likely.

“I’m heading out now,” Armando tells her as he stands. “With the councilman’s spies everywhere, I don’t want to waste any time. We don’t know who could be watching.”

He pushes past her and heads toward the spot where Hank has remained since the boy entered the kitchen. When Hank’s father notices him, he starts, shocked, perhaps, at the reminder that Hank was standing there for the entirety of their exchange.

“Hank,” he says intelligently.

“Papa, I want to go with you.”

A plate cracks against the inside of the sink. They both look over to Angel, gazes drawn to her hands, soapy and clenched tight around the edge of the counter.

“Armando,” she says in a low voice. “I know what you’re going to say. And I’m asking you, don’t.”

When Armando’s hand comes to rest gently on Hank’s shoulder, Charles shrinks down beneath the coat collar. Beside him, Raven leans forward.

“You said yourself,” Armando responds, though as he does, he only seems to have eyes for Hank. The space between his thumb and index finger has slotted into place somewhere along the boy’s collarbone. “Hank hasn’t been out of the district since he was a baby. He needs to know - see how they survive, right?”

His question is met with an unsteady but resolute silence.

“Settled, then.” Armando moves into the hallway. “Grab your backpack, Hank. You’ll need to take a lunch.”

Hank sends a curious look to his mother; she’s still at the sink, but now she’s turned her back to them, hands busy again with the dishes.

It takes little time at all to retrieve the backpack from beneath a pile of books in Hank’s bedroom and a few things from the pantry for later. Hank shoves in a half loaf of bread along with a jar of something dark and liquidy.

Charles does nothing more than hold on, through it all. The pocket of air beneath the coat collar has grown stuffy and too-warm, but he thinks it best that the two of them stay hidden, if they’re going outside.

Which Charles is still trying to parse the meaning of. He and Raven, _outside_ the wall of the garden. He doesn’t know whether he’ll explode from the excitement even now bubbling beneath his skin or start to panic. His gut twists, and he thinks, dazedly, that he might be sick.

Raven glares at him. Her golden hair is messy, and she has a bit of the fabric of Hank’s collar hanging in her face. She only stops when Hank’s footsteps turn into hurried bounds to catch up with his father, already out the front door, and both fairies are jostled roughly.

As soon as Charles can stick his head out of the coat again, he’s hit with the smell of human food, the delicious kind that comes straight from the oven, hot and soft - bread, more than likely. The warmth in the air registers second, followed closely by the dry taste of it in the back of his throat when he inhales. The sunlight they’re greeted with is blinding and nothing in his vision is quite discernable until the black spots have receded.

There are humans _everywhere_ , of every shape and manner. They trundle along between carts, in and out of buildings and both up and down the wide street. Several carriages pass by, pulled by curiously large and sturdy creatures Hank had once called ‘horses.’

Hank tilts his head to the side, angling his words back at Charles and Raven, and speaks quickly and quietly, “Stay down, okay? Papa’s taking us to the night district, but it’s not very far.”

Armando shoulders a large duffel as he traverses the street, Hank close at his heels. The crowds are sparse enough that walking doesn’t prove much of a hindrance, bumpy a ride as Charles believes it to be. It’s survivable, at least. He and Raven have the chance to gaze up in wonder at the immense human structures - houses and stores, Hank had said - that rise up around them. The cottage itself is small fry in comparison, situated in the center of a half-circle at the end of the street, walled off with the garden on the other side. The cobblestone beneath their feet is dark and worn, shaded by the buildings that run along the sidewalks.

The humans are much cleaner than either had imagined; everything about their homes and clothing is immaculate, and every building glows an eerie pearl-white in the daylight. Beyond the scattered rooftops, a wall much taller than that of the garden rises skyward, dark and foreboding with the long shadow slanted across it on account of the sun, only just cresting behind it.

The town, Charles realizes - the entire town has a wall of its own.

Hank’s father leads them a little ways further, down two more streets before he finally comes to a stop. Raven pulls at Hank’s collar, dragging it lower over her head. She moves closer to Charles and presses her wings into his.

Reassurance, that’s what she is seeking. She must be terrified.

The street they’ve reached is completely empty. It’s a dead-end; though not necessarily, for before them looms some sort of shadowed tunnel. A black-iron gate stands just in front of it, effectively sealing it off.

Almost immediately, Armando is reaching into his duffel and procuring something that he flashes at a nearby human - a truly terrifying man with a vibrant scar running down the side of his face - who makes a gesture behind him. A second later, and the gate slides open across the ground, scratching gravel and bits of upturned stone as it crawls out of the way.

The tunnel is long and uneven, slightly slanted, and follows along a small ways with only scattered lightbulbs in the low ceiling marking the path ahead. Charles can feel Raven shivering where their arms and shoulders touch; he’s struck in that moment with fearful anticipation – of what, he is not certain. The inside of the tunnel is dry, though the sound of shoes sloshing through water resounds off the walls, and although Hank does not appear as bothered by the darkness and the tunnel itself, Charles does not attempt to speak to him.

Hank keeps in step with his father. At some point, he tilts his head to the side and manages to whisper, “It’s an old drainage tunnel. I’ve been through here before, but – not in a long while.”

Slowly but surely a circle of light emerges out of the gloom and grows larger as they draw close. The tunnel opens into another small gated area, perhaps only a sparse few feet from the entrance to the tunnel.

The ring of light was not the sun, as Charles had assumed it to be. And it’s a startling realization that, somehow, night has already fallen. Which is – _impossible._

The bright light comes from several streetlamps just beyond the gate. When Armando approaches, the iron bars part with little fanfare, breaking down the middle and sliding open with another loud shriek against the cobblestone.

Several humans dressed in the same clean-cut uniform as the man with the scar stand in parallel positions along the sides of the gateway. They stare blankly at Hank and Armando as they pass, through them, as if not seeing them at all.

“Guards,” Hank says beneath his breath.

Charles’ own breath fogs as it hits the air, and he feels it, the sudden, visceral chill now pressing in. This night is darker than any he has ever seen, leaking between the shoddy buildings that line the street and filling the cavernous alleyways in between. It’s such a change from the other side of the tunnel - the dirt and mud and trash that litter the ground, the humans in patched, ugly clothing sitting in front of shopfronts and on every street corner, tired and still. It’s – starvation. That’s what it is; it’s deprivation.

This is the night district.

“This way,” Armando calls over his shoulder as he shifts his duffel. The beginnings of a grimace are twitching in the corners of his lips, though his eyes are thoroughly guarded. “Don’t stop, Hank.”

The boy makes no indication of wanting to; he speeds up his steps and nearly knocks into Armando, he’s moving so fast, and the soles of his shoes dislodge bits of rock that snap and crack along the pavement.

The night is murky; cloudy sky and a thick, heavy-blanketed layer of air that sinks down past the crowded rooftops. Armando navigates it with a certain, familiar ease. As they break right down a side-alley, he reaches back to grab at Hank’s hand and pulls the boy tight against his side.

“Stay close,” is all the man says. It’s a pinprick of hoarse breath against the quiet, the only other sound their hurried footsteps in the dark.

Charles lets the minutes tick by, studying the curious way in which his exhales leave his mouth in barely-there bursts of white. He reaches a hand forward to attempt to grab at it, the air, and is instantly hit with the vicious bite of -.oh, _this_ \- this is called _cold_.

Then suddenly they’ve come to a stop, and Armando’s arm is brushing an inch from the place where Charles and Raven have hidden themselves as the man nudges Hank forward.

They stand before an unremarkable building, tall but narrow and half-sunken into another building erected just beside it. There are bricks, many of them, mismatched dark reds and browns and blacks, cracks in greying plastic that run experimental dances along the wall that faces out into the street. There are words written on a sign above a wide-set black door, slanted calligraphic type in flaking sweeps of black paint. Glass windows flank either side of the door, but Charles cannot make anything out inside aside from the general shape of things, curtained as they are in shadow.

“I want you to stay here,” Armando tells Hank. He gestures toward a wooden staircase that runs up the side of the building to the second floor landing.

Hank seems uncertain when his gaze cuts to it, a subtle quirk to his jaw that Charles watches shift the muscles along the boy’s neck. He wants to argue, that much is clear. “Why can’t I go up with you?”

“Because,” Armando murmurs, flicking two fingers up to brush across one of Hank’s cheeks. He squints at Hank for a moment, moves to rub more thoroughly at what must be a smear of dirt on the boy’s face. “Eat your lunch. And _stay here_.”

Grudgingly, Hank grunts his assent and sinks down on the slight incline of the sidewalk. He plants his feet on the cobblestone and slowly drags his backpack around into his lap. By the time he’s plucking at the top flap, his father has disappeared up the stairs.

“I hate this,” Hank mutters. He reaches around to scratch at his neck, but seems to realize something, and drops it. “Oh - you guys okay?”

Raven extracts herself from beneath his collar now that the coast is clear. It’s only the three of them; the street is otherwise empty. “Fine,” she remarks dryly. “A little banged up. You could’ve warned us about the bumpy ride.”

“Yeah, that,” Hank replies, his neck burning dark pink. “Sorry.”

She forgives him quickly enough, already flying down to perch on one of Hank’s outstretched knees. She leans forward over the backpack and stares down into it, wings twitching restlessly.

“Food?” she asks. She turns a hopeful look up at him. “My stomach feels like its ready to eat itself.”

Hank fumbles as he gets the bread unwrapped. He breaks off a few pieces for her, offering them between bites of his own. The jar he pulls out and rests by his foot.

“It’s jelly,” he tells her, gesturing. “Here, I’ll show you how to put it on the bread.”

It’s only now that Charles drags himself to his feet. He wobbles as he walks along Hank’s narrow shoulders and stops just as he reaches the edge. “What does that mean,” he says suddenly, attention focused behind them, on the human writing above the door. “Those words?”

“Hmm?” Hank shifts around. “Oh, it says... _Fifth Street Music_.” The boy cocks his head, glasses sliding a bit wonky, which he quickly corrects. “It’s written really fancy, though. I think it’s a music shop.”

Charles’ wings itch to do something, anything. He’s not sure if he can keep himself from acting on it. “What’s a music shop?” He knows what music is, of course. The fairies have their own, same as humans, but it’s the very prospect again - a chance to learn the oddities of humans. Their music, he has yet to come across. And he finds himself wanting to know more.

Hank’s mouth is full when he starts to speak, but then he pauses, swallows, and slowly lifts his eyebrows. “They sell instruments, I think. I’ve never seen this one before.”

“I want to go inside,” Charles responds. He casts a glance down at Raven; she returns it easily, her eyebrows also beginning to arch, same as Hank’s, though its downplayed by the crumbs and bits of purple strewn around her lips and cheeks. But before she can open her mouth - which clearly she means to - the door to the shop opens.

A heavily-clothed figure emerges, clad in a trenchcoat and a dark shawl that reaches down beneath the lapels. When the figure bustles out into the street, whoever it is must catch sight of Hank because they turn, revealing their face. It’s a woman, older, by the looks of the lines etched into her skin, almost like tracks worn into stone. Her sharp gaze runs over Hank for a number of seconds, and it’s like a shock of cold water, the color of those eyes.

It seems...  impossible, but Charles is struck with the thought that they look just like Erik’s.

The woman’s eyes pass over both Raven and Charles before she turns on her heel, stalks across the street, and disappears into one of the buildings on the other side.

“Was that...,” Hank starts to say. “Huh.”

“Weird,” Raven supplies. If she says anything else, its lost in her shirt sleeve as she wipes remnant jelly from her face.

Charles, on the hand, has already zeroed in on the door to the music shop. The woman had left it slightly ajar. He really has no compunction, then, when he takes off toward it and ignores the sharp noise of protest his action startles out of Raven.

He approaches the door quickly, and notices with a burst of glee that the crack is an inch and a half thick - just wide enough for him to slip inside. It’s a tight squeeze, but he manages, an arm and a leg of one side of his body in first and followed closely by the rest of him. He’s certain to keep his wings close and out of the way of the splintered strips of woods that stick out of the doorjamb.

The door though, it falls shut behind him with an ominous _click_. He doesn’t let it bother him, because surely he can find another way out. Surely. At least now he has the assurance that Raven won’t come after him.

The room is exceptionally dark, shadows draped over the furniture and the indefinite objects strewn about on tabletops. The streetlamps outside only reach so far past the front windows, but unlike outside, the air in here is comfortably warm.

And - _there._

Toward the back of the room and beyond the rows of shelves, a small yellow glow alights upon the keys of some sort of instrument Charles has never come across before. The glow comes from a candle that sits atop it, and the slow-moving beads of wax there, running down its sides - they cause the light to waver and break almost rhythmically.

The instrument is wide, sleek black, an oddly well-preserved and, if Charles is speaking candidly, quite beautiful thing considering the dust-covered odds and ends scattered around the rest of the shop. The front of it is propped open and there’s a row of white keys there, looking for all the world like a row of perfect teeth.

Charles finds himself more intrigued than fearful, now. He flies closer, close enough to land on one of the teeth. When he does, it’s immediately crushed under his weight - no, it’s pushed _downward_ , like a button - and a deep, jarring note hits the air. Charles startles instantly, wings flaring out. The sound is still going, but as time stretches on it peters out, dissolving once again into silence.

A soft thud comes from somewhere behind him. Charles’ head whips around so fast it hurts.

An open door in the back of the shop lies open, faint light outlining a cramped stairwell, and just in front of it –

The boy has moved to a table by the door, and the noise, that must’ve been the cardboard box he’d set down in front of him. Charles knows this because, peaking over the top of the instrument – still hidden, he’s _still_ hidden – he can see where dust has kicked up around the boy.

Erik raises his head from the contents of the box slowly, his eyes squinted, adjusting to the dark, as he peers out into the room. After a long, drawn out moment, his eyes drop back to the box. His hands come up to it as he pries bits and pieces of gnarled... metal, it looks like, from within. The scraps click against the tabletop as he sets them out.

Charles holds his breath. There’s a single thought swimming at the forefront of his mind, that, should he reveal himself, Erik will be angry. He’s partly resigned to this fact, though another part of him refuses to give up. As far as Charles is concerned, Erik came into _his_ garden, and that means he can’t let it go. Raven had once described Charles as “a ridiculous, starry-eyed sod of a bleeding heart,” and yes – just thinking about that particular comment has his wings ruffled – but he’ll admit there is a bit of truth to the statement.

What that means for Charles now is that he’ll restrain himself from making his presence known, keep hidden, if it means he can discover just that little bit more about this intriguing human. Charles honestly cannot say why he has to know, but when he considers the question, briefly, he sees those eyes in his mind, thinks of summer thunderstorms, hot flashes of lightning across darker skies, and his throat feels all at once like it’s too tight. So he won’t – won’t even begin to try to name that feeling. He hunches down against the strange instrument’s white teeth and hopes the candlelight will draw any attention away from Charles’ sudden inability to control his glow.

His face feels hot. He hides it in the curl of his knees.

Of course, once Charles lifts his head he is greeted by the sight of Erik standing just beside the instrument and running a slender hand along its surface.

Charles promptly falls back on his ass. This time, though, his weight decompresses three keys instead of one, and the sound it makes it cacophonous, deep and abrupt.

“You –“ Erik hisses, his eyes narrowed and cold. He moves around the instrument to the other side, leaning in over a low bench that is set before the keys.

“You can’t be here,” he says icily.

Charles lifts his chin. “I can and I am. It’s not like I intentionally came looking for you. I was just passing through and wanted –“ Well. To poke his nose where he shouldn’t. But that’s neither here nor there.

Erik has one of the metal scraps in his hand, and the skin of his fist has gone white where he’s holding it too tight. It takes a little longer for him to form a response; his jaw tightens at those words, and with the his face this close – far too close, because Charles’ heart seems fit to jump ship – Charles can hear Erik grinding his teeth.

“This is no place for a – a character out of some _children’s_ story,” Erik finally manages. “Do you want to get yourself killed? It’s too dangerous, and if you weren’t so _stupid_ , you would –“

“You keep insulting me,” Charles snaps, pushing himself up to his full height. Thankfully, his movements don’t cause the instrument to make any more of those horrifically loud bursts of noise. “But I’ve yet to be given a reason why. If you had maybe _asked_ you would know that the door closed behind me, locking me in, when I came in from the street.”

Charles tries to muster up the anger and irritation he knows he should be feeling right about now, but finds that, oddly enough, he cannot. It all dissipates at the sight of Erik’s face going slack with shock. Charles cannot decide if the surprise written there is from hearing the truth or from the realization that this little fairy does, in fact, have a backbone after all.

Erik opens his mouth, closes it. He twists his head away and glares at the wall. “Sorry,” he mutters at long last, grudging. “I’m not lying though. It’s dangerous here and you – you best go back to that little garden of yours, stay safe and fed.”

At that, Charles tilts his head. Instead of snapping again, he finds he rather fancies the tenderness that’s crept into the boy’s voice, the rawness – or more precisely, the element of concern hidden in plain sight. He lets a tiny smile curl his lips, one corner knocking up.

The boy is abrasive to protect himself, much like the fairies have their rules.

“Erik?” he questions, quirks an eyebrow. Charles walks to the edge of the instrument and seeks upward with his gaze, willing the other to meet it.

And the boy does, nodding jerkily.

“Forgive my impertinence,” Charles goes on. “I am glad to see you, Erik. I had been quite, er – hopeful – that you would come back to the garden. I don’t think you understood me the last time, but,” Charles jumps up to hover in front of Erik’s face, wings a blur of blue and his arms held out carefully, palms down, “I did give you a standing invitation to come back any time.”

Erik makes a derogatory sound in his throat, somehow managing to frown even harder, if that’s even possible. “Not like I could. I’m not some fairy, free to do as I please.”

Ah – because Erik had said it himself, the night district is dangerous beyond Charles’ understanding, and if his passage here is anything to go by, the back and forth between the two is not an easy one.

Charles’ thoughts are a steady buzz as he attempts to put the pieces of what he’s learned together. Erik’s family must be here because they are poor. Everyone in the night district is. And Charles is starting to believe that, somehow, Hank’s parents lived here before they got out. But how – he shudders to imagine _that_ _man_ , the one who visited Angel and Armando. It must have something to do with the councilman.

As for Erik, the boy is not so dissimilar from fairies. He risked leaving the district and stealing from the garden, for one, and that Charles suspects was not an action done selfishly.

That isn’t what Charles finds so lovely about this boy, though, and he can’t hide _that_ thought away quickly enough.

Warily, Erik confirms Charles’ suspicions. “The fruit I gave to the other children, the ones who live close by. They needed it much more than I.”

“And you couldn’t manage it again?”

“No.” Erik’s mouth tightens into a thin line. “I tried, but mama caught me out.”

“Is she the human that left the door open?”

The corner of Erik’s lip twitches. It’s the closest thing to a smile Charles has seen him make, and Charles has to duck his head to hide the responding grin that involuntarily breaks across his face.

“Yes,” the boy answers evenly. “She went across the street to buy candles. We...” when Erik trails off, he gives the candlestick sitting atop the instrument a pointed look.

“We used our last one, here.” He reaches forward and taps the smooth surface with two fingers. Erik’s accent had become more pronounced as he’d rattled at Charles, but now, curiously, it settles into something easier, slotting between his consonants in a way that’s... gentle, almost. Charles is at a loss for how to ask Erik to keep speaking and never stop.

Erik makes an aborted move for the bench, but must think otherwise of it, and folds his long legs in beneath the instrument to sit down. “You... have you ever heard a piano before?” He runs his fingers down the keys. “I’ve been practicing, but with mama I can never tell if she’s being honest that I’m – any good.”

“No!” Charles hurries to say, so abrupt that he startles Erik. There’s a fraction of a second where the boy looks suddenly, unbearably crestfallen. “I mean - yes,” Charles corrects. “I would _love_ to hear you play, Erik”

Charles lands beside the candle and sweeps his wings back. He circles around it, catching the light to make it reflect off his wings in different ways as he waits for Erik to start. When Charles glances over his shoulder, Erik’s hands are still ghosting over the keys, and there is a quiet intensity to his eyes, now, as he studies them.

A decision made, those fingers press down and the song begins.

Whatever it is, it’s astoundingly beautiful. The notes the piano makes carry more than any fairy-made instrument could ever hope to – weighted with emotion that is wholly human, both strong and vulnerable at once. If sounds could be described by emotions, Charles might say the piece starts lonely and peaks into something like contentment, a rolling from lower notes to higher as Erik’s fingers skip down the keys.

Charles doesn’t even realize it ends for a touch after, like he can still hear it in his head, clear as bell. And he has to wonder, is it the piano he finds so lovely or the talent of its player.

Erik clears his throat. “My father taught me that one. He’s much better at it.”

The words are on the tip of Charles’ tongue - _Erik, you’re amazing_ – when they’re interrupted by the arrival of someone through the front door.

“Ah, schatz,” comes a tired voice from beneath the shawl, deft fingers already moving to pull it down. “You play so wonderfully. And see – I brought the candles!” She bandies about a handful of them. “There’s a boy outside, just there on the stoop. He looks to be about your age, too. Do you think he’d like some warm soup? The cold is dreadful today.”

“Mama.” Erik’s hands fall away from the keys in an instant, and he stands. Charles can’t see his face but the back of his neck has gone beat red. “Mr. Muñoz, ah, he said something about an armoire?”

His mother walks past the piano, heading for the back stairwell. “An armoire? Goodness, no. I thought I told him something simple. That boy.” She’s halfway up the stairs before she must realize he isn’t following her. “Erik, the soup is nearly ready, come along now.”

Wordless, Erik pulls back one side of his jacket. A split second decision has Charles settling himself inside its inner pocket.

It’s pleasantly warm, pressed between the fabric and somewhere along the boy’s chest, and Charles doesn’t dare move until he can feel Erik traverse the stairs and come to a stop. He indulges the impulse, really, because he doesn’t think Erik knows that only children can see fairies, as Erik appears to be hiding Charles from sight as best he can.

He’ll just have to disabuse the boy of that notion – it can wait.

Erik is walking again, no longer ascending, and only stops briefly to greet someone: “Mr. Muñoz.”

“Hello, Erik,” a muffled voice – Armando’s – returns. “Your mother is not so keen on the armoire, so Jakob and I have decided on a table for your kitchen. You like that idea better?”

It’s a curious thing, how even and blank Erik’s tone goes when he speaks to Armando. “The other one has a broken leg. It wobbles.”

“Yes,” Armando agrees. Then he sounds farther away, talking to somebody else. “It’s the best choice if I’m going to be making anything. And – I apologize ahead of time, if it’s imposing to ask to stay a little longer for this. I’ll need to take more measurements.”

“It’s no trouble,” replies a different voice, much deeper than Armando’s and a touch more jovial. “I haven’t seen you in ages, Armando! Though, perhaps it would be better under different circumstances. I hate to imagine you’re here under duress.”

“Well, councilman said you’ve earned it. Though knowing Shaw, he thinks giving people nice things is worth their obedience. Funny how these ‘favors’ of his are always basic necessities of survival.”

There is more to what is being said, and Charles needs time to parse it out. But before he can begin to, the click of a door shutting has the rest of the conversation cut off. It’s still there, just – ambient background jumble.

Another click, rumpling fabric, and Charles is knocked forward. Fingers appear at the pocket’s opening, slowly revealing the sharp lines of Erik’s face, the boy peering down at him.

“My room,” Erik murmurs by way of response. He holds the pocket open so Charles can crawl out of it and fly into the open space.

The room is... more of a wide closet than any bedroom should be. Erik walked two feet into it and his leg is pressed against the side of the bedpost. The bed itself is set low to the ground, a single thin sheet folded over a raggedy mattress. As for the floorspace - very little of it remains, with the cardboard boxes stacked in the corners and along the walls. The room’s most notable aspect, the one Charles finds himself drawn to, is the slanted ceiling that angles over the bed and the window set within it. Outside, the streets are dark, but tiny speckles of constellations litter the sky far above.

“Why do you have so many boxes?” Charles prompts, settling onto the windowsill.

Erik moves to the closest one in reach and picks something from it. When he brings it forward for Charles’ inspection, the faint light from outside colors the crumpled piece of metal blue.

“I... like metal,” the boy says. His demeanor has softened around its rough edges, and its a startling thing for Charles to witness. The words feel nearly too vulnerable. “They’re always cold to the touch, but did you know that, when you hold them, they absorb your body heat?” Erik folds himself down on the bed, his face half-lit as he leans back against the wall. He closes his eyes and sighs quietly. “Then they’re warm, too. I collect them, but... mama said I should move some of them downstairs,” he’s musing, now, a wry twist to his lips, “She said I wouldn’t be able to walk into my own room, soon enough.”

Twisted and mangled as the metal may be, here and now, in the boy’s hands, the way it reflects the light is stunning. Charles says as much as he sits, moving to press his wings to the cool glass.

Erik sets the scrap on the windowsill then reaches behind him for something that had been laid out on the bed prior to them entering the room. Its rectangular and decorated along the edges with delicate carvings, vines accompanied by a strange pattern of swirls, etched into the silver.

“I found all the other metal I have,” Erik murmurs. “But this belonged to my grandfather.”

He brings it close to Charles so he can better see the details, more careful and precise than he ever imagined could be worked into something so hard and unmalleable, so cold. “What is it?” he asks, cocking his head to draw his eyes up the side of it. There’s a latch of some sort.

“A cigarette case,” the boy answers as he pulls it back into the cradle of his chest. “Isn’t that strange? Why put so much effort into making it so detailed and - beautiful, like this, when its use doesn’t justify the means?”

“Do you have another use for it, then?” Charles drags one of his wings into his lap, runs the nub of a finger slowly along a vein.

Erik is quiet for what seems like an awfully long time. Haltingly, he says, “I want to - put something important in it. Something just as precious.”

“Maybe,” Charles muses, eyes on his fingers as they continue their path. “I could help you find that something.”

They settle into a comfortable silence, after that. The window faces out toward the street, and Charles only now notices what looks to be Hank down below, still sitting in front of the shop. He can’t make out Raven, but he doubts she would have gone off without that poor boy in tow.

And maybe it’d be too much to hope, but, perhaps Erik would want to meet them, as well. Perhaps, Charles hopes furiously, Erik and he can be considered... friends, now.

“It’s getting late,” Erik says suddenly. “It’ll be harder to find your way back home when night falls in the day district.”

That’s right, because, Charles swallows, the realization hitting him; its always night in the night district. The signs had all been there, hadn’t they? And he’s curious, then, to know if Erik’s ever -

“Here.” The boy unlatches the window and pushes one side outward. “You really should get going. Fly,” Erik says evenly, though a quirk in one eyebrow belies the nature of his words, “or whatever it is you do.”

Just as Charles stands, dread sinking in slowly but surely, he forces himself to turn around. He meets Erik’s gaze, wings flinging out to his sides. His glow is inexhaustible again, spreading out to fill the entire windowpane, but he doesn’t try to hide it. “Would it be alright - if I come back? I understand if you don’t want to be friends, but I...” he trails, unsure.

Erik regards him coolly, his gaze unwavering. Then he smiles for the first time - small and unbelievably crooked. “Go home, Charles.”

Charles does, of course, but not before returning a sly smile of his own.

*

It becomes routine after that evening spent in Erik’s room for Charles to visit every night that he can, which is to say, almost all of them. He slips out from his nest not long after Moira has put the children to bed, will hunker down and wait for hours when it’s Emma instead. The dark has never bothered him unlike the other fairies, and it’s not hard to learn the way back and forth between the garden and the entrance to the night district.

It’s a wonder to Charles that no fairy has ever dared fly over the garden wall, and sure, the first time he does it he feels... odd, a tingle that spreads up his wings for a long time afterward. But he continues to do it nightly and comes to expect that, along with the contrasting elation that grips him the minute he arrives at Erik’s window to find it left open.

The word that might best describe Erik is _brilliant_. In the early hours of the morning, the two of them are too sleepy to do more than speak in quiet tones, sprawled out on Erik’s bed. He finds himself not so much learning of the boy and his past from Erik himself, but from the way he talks and acts, the way he _feel_ s. Or more accurately, the cold-iron hold Erik has on his emotions. Because the boy is not at all forthright with them, and there are many mornings where Charles leaves feeling more frustrated than anything else.

They have their differences, yet Charles can’t help but enjoy Erik’s company, no matter how acerbic and sharp-tongued Erik often is. There’s the spark behind his grey eyes when he shows Charles a new piece of metal, this time nickel or copper or another, and it warms him, the knowledge that Erik shares it with him and him alone.

Erik won’t risk returning to the garden and Charles has accepted that.

But then, one night a few months after their strange friendship had started, it happens. Charles is still awake in his nest because - damn her - Emma had been close by, keeping watch over the children until she decided she’d had enough of it. She’d just flown off tens minutes prior when a hushed voice cuts through the darkness from somewhere below, around the base of the tree.

“Charles?” He recognizes the voice instantly. It’s - it’s _Erik_.

“Ssh, I’m here!” Charles tries to tell him, whispering fiercely as he climbs from the nest. He stretches his wings and folds them down against his back. Behind him, Raven is sitting up and rubbing a hand against one of her eyes. She must have woken when Charles had hurried from the nest.

She blinks blearily at him, narrows her eyes. “Charles, what -”

In all the time that Charles has been sneaking out to visit Erik, he hadn’t once told Raven. He’d been good about his comings and goings, making sure as to not wake her every time he left then returned. He hadn’t told her about that first day in the night district, either. As far as she knew, when the door of the store had locked, Charles had spent that time looking for a way out - which had been the upstairs window.

Now though, he’s left without much of a choice.

“He came!” Charles whispers with poorly-contained excitement. “He actually came. Raven, you have to come meet him!” He grabs her hand and yanks her from the nest, giving her just enough time to spread her wings before he pulls her over the edge of the branch with him.

They wing down to the ground, and both of them nearly jump out of their skins when Erik pushes his way through one of the bushes. His face is frightening with the way their glows light up its sharp contours.

Erik tilts his face away and rubs at his neck. His eyes flick down. “Um. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Oh, _Erik_ ,” is all Charles can manage. He can’t help it, because - _Erik is actually here_. He came to see _Charles_.

There’s a sharp pinch at Charles’ arm. “Charles,” Raven hisses. “Why is this human in the garden?” But then she must she something flicker across Charles’ face, because she pinches harder, glaring, “You _know him_?”

“Yes, ah, Raven,” Charles says, “this is Erik. He came into the garden once, some time ago, and I said he was welcome back if he wanted.”

Raven doesn’t seem convinced. She lets go of his arm, at least, and settles her hands upon her nightgown to smooth out the wrinkles. “I can’t believe you never told me!” Her glare is now aimed at Erik. “You better not have hurt my brother, not even once. And you better have nice manners, too, or I’ll tell Hank to beat you up. He’s big.”

She seems appeased enough after introductions are made and, promptly, invites herself along when Charles tells her he and Erik are going to find a game to play.

Then she becomes _adamant_ that they should wake Hank, too.

Honestly, Charles is beginning to suspect she likes him more.

It’s a good thing Hank’s room is on the inside of the garden, because it’s much easier to get to. Raven has the brilliant idea of throwing rocks at his window, which, while rather loud, does the trick quickly without waking anyone else. Also, Erik has impeccable aim.

Charles had been worried about how any meeting between Erik and Hank would go. He never thought it in the realm of possibility, because he isn’t sure the two boys are... compatible, exactly.

It is not nearly as gratifying as it should be that he was right about that.

The four of them move into a grove of cherry blossoms close to the pond and begin a particularly involved game of hide and seek. Erik, who had jumped to elect himself as seeker, finds Hank first. Charles would say it’s because the boy is easily spotted because of his size, compared to Charles and Raven, but Hank is really that terrible at the game. It left Hank trailing awkwardly after Erik as they wandered around in search of the fairies.

What happened next, well, he and Raven both know because they were hidden in one of the low branches, trying their best to muffle their giggles as they watched Erik grow more and more frustrated. After about ten minutes of this, Hank tries to start a conversation and, Hank being Hank, excitedly tells Erik about the journal he’s been keeping, the one where he hopes to put everything he ever learns about fairies.

He must assume Erik _knows_ , because when he explain why - the inevitability of growing old and _forgetting_ -

Erik pushes Hank to the ground so hard a chilling _crack_ reverberates up into the trees. Tears gather in Hank’s eyes, and he clutches his hurt arm to his chest, a horrible, wrecked sob catching in his throat. All the while, Erik hasn’t moved. The boy stands there, eerily still, and breathes loudly through his nose.

Raven chooses that moment to burst from their hiding spot. She zips down to Hank in a heartbeat and frets over him, trying desperately to soothe his cries. The glare she turns on Erik could curdle milk. “What did you _do_.”

The other boy holds his ground. His jaw shifts, and through his teeth, he grits out, “Nobody told me.”

“Erik!” Charles flies in close to his face, a hand outstretched to - he doesn’t know what, to touch, maybe. But Erik draws back from it, practically snarls.

“You didn’t -”

Charles’ eyes have grown huge. “What’s wrong, Erik?”

“- _tell_ me.”

As soon as the words hit the air, Erik looks down at his clenched hands.

Then he runs.

And Charles - he goes fast as his wings can carry him but, hurtling through the thick trees and brush, he’s always a little bit behind. Erik has already disappeared over the top of the wall when he reaches it. And to even think, that Erik would run _away_ from him, it’s -

Devastating, but no less real.

Charles lets Erik go. He doesn’t go over the wall after him.

Thinking back to that moment, he’ll always regret that he didn’t.

*

Erik’s window is locked that next night, and the next, and every subsequent night after. Charles continues to visit, despite it. When he arrives, the latch is in place, the inside dark, and there’s always a single second of doubt wherein Charles considers that Erik is simply _gone_.

But he isn’t. Can’t be. He just... doesn’t want to see Charles.

That doesn’t stop him from going every night, anyway. He makes a point, in fact, of never missing a single one. A week passes, then two, and Charles still does not give up.

Fairies are stubborn, but Charles is _contrary_.

Then, one day, Charles leaves just before dark. He has an idea, one he’s considered long and hard, and he decides there’s no other choice he’d rather make.

Charles visits his birth flower every now and again; he likes to run his hands down its curled petals and simply be close to it. Like any other fairy, his connection to his flower thrives beneath his skin, a livewire that pulses in tune with his heartbeat. Being close tends to ground him - if Charles is alive and healthy, so his flower always shall be, and he in turn with it.

But this time, when he retreats to the back of the garden and locates it along the wall, he takes the sight of it in, as it is, one last time. Then he does the unthinkable - he plucks the flower from its vine.

Although any other flower would be as sure as dead pulled from its roots, his magic will keep it alive indefinitely. He’d learned as much from Moira, one of those rare times he paid attention during his lessons.

The flower’s glow is a match for his own, and clutching it tight against his chest, he moves off from the wall and makes his way to the night district once more.

If this doesn’t work, Charles doesn’t think he’d be able to try again.

Imagine his surprise - and hope, always that naive hope - when he comes upon the music shop and sees Erik’s window open from the street. The night is not a particularly dark one; the storefronts and apartment buildings are grey and dismal, but the light reaching past the window from within Erik’s room is as good a beacon as any.

“Erik?” he calls tentatively, lighting down just on the inside of the window.”Are you... there?”

The bedroom appears empty. Still, the light comes from a candle holder sitting atop the bedsheet, and it would seem that the candle was recently lit. The room is warmer than its ever been, a soothing fragrance in the air to match, and, Charles notices with a start, the boxes that had always crowded the floorspace have disappeared.

Charles jumps at the creak of the door as it opens into the room. He clutches his flower tightly, unable to move.

“...Charles?” It can’t be anyone else but Erik, shuffling into the room and closing the door behind him. He walks to the bed, an immediate brightness to his eyes that shutters when he must remember why he’d shut Charles out to begin with. The boy has to visibly shake himself, though; Charles wants to believe that a good sign, that Erik doesn’t _want_ to.

“Erik -” Good gods, Charles won’t even get the words out if he chokes up on the first one. “Erik, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. And I know that doesn’t make up for it, because you - but I -” His breath leaves him and he staggers forward. His wings push out to the sides, and he brings them back to tuck low to the ground, drooping.

Charles stretches the flower out from his chest. “I brought you this. I know it’s a silly thing, but... I wanted to.”

Of all the ways Charles imagined Erik would reply, it most certainly was not a soft, “Where did you get that?”

“It’s...,” Charles whispers, at a loss for how to describe it, “mine.”

Erik steps toward the bed, shuffles onto it with his knees. “I haven’t seen nightlock in,” he swallows, throat clicking, “a very long time.” His eyes slowly trace the petals as if he were entranced. “Shaw had them all burned. They are... the only flower that blooms in the district.”

“And Shaw didn’t like that,” Charles finishes.

“No. He didn’t.”

After a time, Erik manages to peel his eyes from the flower. He meets Charles’ gaze, clears his throat. “I am... also sorry. I realize now that you had a reason not to tell me, where before I had blamed you for it.” _You didn’t want to hurt me_ lies beneath the words there, unsaid.

Then, haltingly, he asks, “May I touch it?”

_Of course,_ Charles wants to scream. Instead, it’s a careful, “Yes.”

He places the flower into the cupped palm the boys offers and nearly loses himself at the sight of Erik stroking a finger down the petals. The touch is reverent, gentler than Erik has ever been. It isn’t a shock; Charles has always known that part of Erik is there, and he cares even more for him because of it.

“I brought it,” Charles smiles, “to give to you.”

Erik’s head snaps up, his eyes owlish. “Me?”

Charles nods and approaches the edge of the windowsill to sit down. “I was hoping it would suffice as an apology, of sorts. It’s... important - to me.” He shakes his head. “Words cannot quite describe how much so.”

“And you would -” Erik chokes on his own breath, swallows. “You would give it to _me_?”

Is Erik... crying? There, in the corner of his eyes, tears welling up above his reddening cheeks. Charles hadn’t thought the boy capable, or perhaps he did. Erik is just too strong of will, too indifferent and abrasive, to allow his true feelings to show. To do so now is a break in his control, and he’s made vulnerable by it.

“It’s a part of me,” Charles continues. “A part that can never wilt or die. I guess you could liken it to a human soul, though not quite, exactly, because it’s magic. I had considered that, if I gave you this, it might - change things, somehow.”

_Make you not forget._

They don’t mention what Hank said. They don’t need to.

“Thank you.” Erik gives him one of his small, barely-there smiles. The bed dips as he leans back, snatches something from beneath his pillow. It’s - the cigarette case, Charles remembers.

The case opens with a soft click and reveals a dark interior within. Gently, Erik places the nightlock flower inside, shutting it in slow increments. His gaze cuts back to Charles, eyes alight with something warm.

_Precious_ , Erik had said.

Suddenly, the room feels too hot.

“I’ll always keep it safe.”

His flower, in a human’s hands. To be honest, Charles doesn’t trust anyone more.

*

Their lives go back to the way they had been, after that night. Erik eventually apologizes to Hank, who quickly offers an apology of his own - Raven is the one who takes longer to forgive what happened - and the passing years only serve to strengthen his and Charles’ peculiar friendship.

It isn’t the first time in his life that Charles has questioned the rules that the fairies of the garden have followed for over a century, but it’s the first time that he’s wanted to prove them wrong. There are moments where Charles finds his gaze lingering on Erik much longer than on any one else - the boy’s long fingers when smeared with paint, the glint of his pale eyes on the other side of a candle, the soft fan of his hair across the grass when they lie beneath the trees after one of their games.

It isn’t innate, every fae child is told - and Charles recalls the way Emma had said it, the sour upturn in the corner of her lip - it isn’t in a fairy’s nature to want. To want is to be mortal, to be human, and all the pain that comes with it.

But it is in those precious moments that, most unlike any other fairy, Charles wants - furiously and more fiercely than he could have ever imagined before - and he _knows_ \- he wants them to last here  forever.

Of course, it only lasts until it ends.

Five years later, Erik’s parents die - murdered, or so Erik is led to believe, distraught, something shattered inside him, and incapable of believing anything less.

He finds out on his own, on one of those nights where he visited Charles in the garden. Charles never learns the full story, but he shudders to think that Erik walked into his parent’s music shop to find them there - dead, blood smeared across the floor. Charles shudders to think it happened all.

The next time he visits Erik, the following night, he’s met with the sight of the boy curled up on his bed, his back to the window.  When Charles tries to speak to him, Erik doesn’t respond. He looks over at the fairy, once, and hunches down again. It takes longer, hours spent coaxing him out with quiet words, to learn the truth of what happened: Erik came back to find his parents dead, murdered in their own home, and the police couldn’t do anything about it, _no one_ could do anything about it - not anyone in the district.

Erik was truly on his own, no living relatives with which he could live and nowhere else to go but stay, and the realization of that fact nearly destroyed him.

For many nights after, Charles returns to Erik’s window. He had shown Erik his fairy magic before, and, now, he thinks it the only way to get through to the boy. Though Erik resolutely refuses to leave his bed or speak, Charles does his best to grow flowers around his window, buds of buttercups and daisies that crawl out from the cracks in the plaster. And once, when Charles flies into the room to find Erik asleep, he weaves the flowers together to make a sort of crown to lay upon the boy’s head.

It’s true, Charles can never understand what it means to lose parents. He understands loss, though, and he tries to cheer his friend up the only way he knows how.

Erik had said he missed the sight of flowers, growing up as he has in the night district. That led Charles to believe it would be enough; it isn’t. Because it becomes frighteningly clear that Erik isn’t ignoring Charles. No, the reason Erik no longer responds, instead laying on the bed and not moving for long stretches of time, is because he can longer see Charles at all.

A week passes in that way. It hurts Charles more than anything else to keep returning, but he won’t stop.

On one of those nights, Charles arrives at Erik’s window and knows immediately that something is wrong. For one, the window is latched shut, and two, a candle is set out on the windowsill but Erik is nowhere to be seen.

Thinking quickly, Charles flies down to the ground and finds that the lights within the music shop are pouring into the street. That, and there’s a veritable _crowd_ of humans inside, men all over the place, moving boxes and carrying things down from the stairwell.

The door is open and Charles quickly flutters inside. He seeks out the piano first, hoping frantically he’ll find his friend.

And - yes, _there_ \- Erik is hunched on the bench, head tucked down and his fingers clutched in his lap.

Charles is about to rush to him when his eyes cut to the figure standing beside the piano. The councilman. It’s _Shaw_. He stands with his back straight, dressed in a clean, well-cut grey suit, and has settled a hand on Erik’s shoulder. Were it anyone else, it would be a gesture of comfort, but the tense line of Erik’s shoulders give him away.

Charles doesn’t move. He’s stuck there, frozen to his core and out in the open. When Shaw’s gaze skips around the room, the man’s eyes land on Charles, and he looks right at him, _sees_ him - and smiles, all teeth.

Shaw says something to Erik, and the boy rises to his feet, falling into step behind the man as they walk past Charles and out into the street. A carriage has drawn up to the curb, another man - the one with the scar - stands at attention beside it.

“Azazel,” Shaw greets him jovially. “Is everything ready?” The men moving about in the shop had set to packing boxes into the carriage, and, now, they move out of the way so the one with the scar may climb atop it.

“All set, boss,” he replies.

Shaw presses Erik forward into the open carriage car. “Make sure our little Erik is put in good hands, yes?”

The scarred man grins. “Da.”

As soon as the door is closed behind Erik, the horses are set into motion and the carriage takes off down the street. The shock that settles into Charles’ bones is so abrupt, so chilling, it takes him much too long to shift his wings and shoot after it. Erik can’t be leaving, he _can’t_. And why he would ever listen to Shaw or even let that man touch him, Charles cannot begin to comprehend.

Because Erik can’t have chosen to leave on his own; Shaw _forced_ him.

_It’s all my fault_ , Charles cannot help but think as he tears after the carriage as fast as his wings are able. _It’s all my fault that Erik was hurt, that Erik_ forgot.

If he hadn’t been with Charles that night, then maybe -

The carriage turns into a wider street that runs beneath some sort of bridge. There’s more traffic here, dozens of other carriage cars and humans bustling about in the street. The scarred man scoffs, yanking at the reins, and has the carriage rolling partially over the sidewalk to get by. Some of the humans protest loudly at him, but he only seems amused by it.

Charles navigates swiftly through the crowd, dodging and jerking out of the way of the people. He follows the scarred man’s path beneath the bridge. On the other side, the wall - the one that surrounds the town, much like the one around the garden - rises up before his eyes. As for the carriage, the scarred man is driving toward a tall, gated passage set into it. Fewer people and horses clutter the way, here. Because this is - the way out of the city, obviously. What must be the _only_ way.

The scarred man does nothing more than tip his hat at one of the guards, and they’re signaling for the gate to be opened. It’s easy enough for Charles to slip by them undetected, though he barely makes it through the opening before the gates are closed shut behind him.

Immediately, Charles is hit by the force of the wind on the outside of the wall. So cold his wings are already going numb, buffeted as they are by it. It’s dark, almost too dark save the lantern at the front of the carriage and a scattering of lights in the far distance. The ground is a sprawling mass of white in every direction, and the wind is painful against his skin.

Snow, Charles recalls Hank once explaining. The touch of it _burns._

Still, he pushes on. The carriage has gained distance, and with Charles flying slower, held back by the snow and harsh wind, he can barely see let alone keep up with it.

A strange sensation overtakes him, then, something that turns over in his stomach unpleasantly before crawling outward to his arms and legs. When he looks down at his hands and blinks at them through his blurring vision, they almost seem to be - disappearing, growing transparent.

He feel as if he is fading, but that’s - _impossible._

He’s falling before he realizes it, his wings useless as he drops toward the cold snow below. Only, he never makes it to the ground.

“Charles!” It’s _Raven_. But how did she - “Gods, Charles, you’re freezing. We have to get back!”

Her arms have hooked under his armpits, trembling as she fights to keep them both in the air.

“Raven, how -” he manages through a fit of coughs.

“I was following you, then I saw -“ she staggers and they dip lower, but somehow she manages to get them both turned around, back to the gate. “ _Charles_. Snap out of it and _help me_.”

Weakly, Charles beats his wings. It does help, some, and the two of them manage to make it back to the gate and slip between the iron grills. Raven pushes her way in first, catching Charles as he tumbles after her. They quickly make their way to a nearby roof, landing hard on the rough shingles, and flop over as they catch their breath.

“Raven,” he wheezes. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”

She rolls onto her stomach and brushes some of her hair from her face. Her skin is drawn and pale, but her tone is cutting when she says, “ _You_ shouldn’t have done something so completely _stupid_.” She falters. “Charles, do you understand what you - you could have _died_ out there!”

“Raven, I -”

“Don’t you ‘Raven’ me, you know I’m right. You were just going to let it happen.”

When Charles doesn’t immediately reply, Raven deflates. “It was Erik, wasn’t it?”

Charles nods, he’s surprised to note he’s been trembling this whole time. “Erik,” he says, throat dry, “forgot. Something happened to his parents and he -”

Raven hushes him, huddles close. She drapes one of her wings over Charles, and they lay there until their breathing evens out and his shivering stops.

She’d give him a more sufficient scolding tomorrow, then, when Charles isn’t too distraught to even parse the words.

Now though - now there is nothing else for it.

Erik is truly gone.

*

It was always inevitable that Hank would one day forget them as Erik had. He holds on longer than they ever could have hoped, but no amount of childhood drawings and diaries written in shaky hand could keep the magic from taking it away.

Raven is ruined by it, of course, something Charles knew would happen but never how to prepare for.

After, the years pass slower than any before. But somehow, they manage to keep the pieces of each other together, and survive it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine Erik's lullaby to be something similar to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl5dFGGLQjc) piano cover of falling slowly nvn

Charles’ knees are hurting, but he tries not to pay them much attention. He stares down into the hall, the space lit with the sunlight that slants through the enormous windows along the wall, and tries to stay focused. His hiding place lies somewhere behind the intricate carvings in the ceiling trim, the best vantage point, though it is narrow and shadowed and caked in dust.

But Charles, for one, does not intend to be spotted.

The clicking of heels on the marble floor carries down the hall, approaching fast. Charles immediately catches sight of Janos. The man’s pace is hurried and his face is decidedly pale as he clings to the morning newspaper.  The clicking only stops after Janos turns into the doorway to the councilman’s chamber. Up to this point, the door has remained open and the councilman himself has not left it. No, Shaw has been in there since mid-morning.

“Sir,” Janos says breathily. The newspaper is crumpled to his chest; Charles can only see the man’s back, making it impossible for him to spy the headline, but he has a good guess what it is. “Sir, this was printed this morning.”

When Janos moves into the chamber, Charles once again has a prime view of Shaw reclined at his desk.

“Quested.” Shaw doesn’t prompt an explanation. Instead, the man’s eyebrows twitch and his fingers thread together on the desk.

Janos sets the paper down in front of Shaw. “Another one just last night. Sir, it’s -”

The councilman’s eyes harden. “Who?”

“It’s Azazel.”

Charles inhales sharply, then freezes, praying Shaw didn’t hear.

Slowly, the councilman rises from his chair. His eyes, when he looks up from the newspaper to regard Janos again, are marked by the same cold fury he’s been nursing all week.

“I want the name of every officer who was on scene. And I want them on my desk within the next fifteen minutes.” When Janos doesn’t immediately move, Shaw growls. “Forensic report, names. _Now_ , Janos.”

As soon as the younger man scurries off, Shaw begins a slow circuit of the chamber. It might be called pacing if Shaw were anything close to human, and it’s been a long time since Charles considered him one.

Charles pulls his head behind the carved slit in the plaster and settles back against it, gentling his breath so as not to stir up the dust.

The news, that’s something to think about. Azazel is the seventh man in the last two weeks to be found dead. Shaw has been trying his utmost to hide it, but there’s only so much his subordinates can cover up when the deaths are so much more. No, his lackeys are being picked off one by one - _murdered_ \- and that is surely frustrating Shaw beyond reason.

If this goes on much longer, there’s no telling what the councilman would do. Having absolute sway over any and all going ons in the two districts, that’s - not something Charles is eager to imagine.

He needs to speak with Emma. He needs to find _Raven_.

Quickly now, Charles makes his way down the small tunnel that the trim forms along the ceiling. A little ways down, a rock hides a hole in the wall that he and Raven had whittled away at for better access to the inside of the building. He slips out into the welcome sunlight of the courtyard that surrounds the capitol. Behind him, the capitol buildings looms like a modern parthenon with its pearly white pillars and decorative fixtures. The town’s clocktower lies just behind it, as strangely unobtrusive as it ever is.

Now then - Raven. She’s likely still making her rounds in the night district. Typical of her, though it is still early in the center district; time, Charles finds, has never been measured quite the same in a place without daylight.

He and Raven have become more at ease with leaving the garden over the years. Outside the walls, the two of them have been splitting their time between the night district and keeping an eye on Shaw. Today, Raven has the former; every day that they can, one or both of them go around the district and use their magic to entertain any child that will watch - growing plants, showering fairy dust, and in Raven’s case, coaxing fireflies from the garden to come along and bring light back to the dark.

They’ve become something for these children, something to look forward to, and no harm comes from it, when, as these children grow older, they always end up forgetting what they’ve seen of the fairies anyway. And of course, since its only the children of the night district that can see them, Shaw has yet to hear a word of it. He and Raven has been able to get away with it for long enough.

As for Shaw - Charles has always known something to be wrong about the man, something sinister hiding beneath the surface. The man has too much power; his lackeys serve to carry out his dirty work and keep anyone who would oppose him cowering in terror. But, Charles has come to realize over the years, Shaw’s one goal is to ensure no one will question the way the town is run, the way it exists, the two districts, and that no one will rise against him.

The fairies are wary of what it is the man _is_ , exactly, and must be careful for that reason. The problem is, after so long spent spying on him, they have yet to catch him doing anything suspicious aside from ordering his men about.

The murders, though, this development is worrying. Azazel was Shaw’s best man, who knows how he will respond? So far, Shaw has done little more than bandy about half-hearted speeches to harried crowds. They’re always given to those in the center district - but perhaps that’s due for course; all the murders _have_ taken place in the richer of the districts. But the public unrest cannot be quelled so easily. Even a man such as Shaw has a breaking point.

Charles has long since stopped using the old drainage tunnel to pass between the districts. The wall that separates the outer poverty from the center district and the capitol is largely impenetrable, but not perfect, and a cursory sweep of the buildings built up against the wall - or, as Charles discovered, the buildings the wall was built _around_ \- ended with a useful discovery. Not far from the garden, actually, is a well-worn bakery that only ever drags in a few customers a day. Curiously, the first time Charles saw the building, he noticed that is is much narrower than the buildings around it. As it turned out, the building did have more to it - on the _other_ side of the wall. The wall had been built over and around it, bisecting it.

It could almost be considered an accident that a section of the wall that went up against the building hadn’t been bricked properly, a line of space - no more than an inch - between brick and the building’s plaster that allows he and Raven to slip between the districts with ease.  The wall is thick, and wedging himself into the tight space is sometimes terrifying and dark, but he always makes it to the other side in one piece.

It is a shock every time, emerging into the neverending night of the outer district. It’s still early, the day leaking over into afternoon, but here the night remains.

Charles zips between buildings and down grungy alleyways at an easy pace, passing by the bright shop windows to watch the humans as they go about their days, many of them laughing and conversing in a way that defies the somber mood that sits heavily over the district. Though they are poor, often go hungry, and are confined to the filth of their birthplace - the same place most would remain, and one day die - their resolve to keep it from defining how they enjoy life is... more than admirable. It’s beautiful.

Now though, a small square comes into view. In the center, stone falls away to loose dirt and soil, dark as if scorched, where there may have once been trees and a park. Quite a lot of people are bustling about the footpaths in either direction, to work or home or other, and their coats are pulled up to protect their necks from the chill.

It only take a single glance around the square to locate Raven. She’s on the far side, fluttering through the air as she dances with the fireflies that have come out tonight. They loop through the air in almost sleepy sweeps, dazzled by the unique glow of Raven’s wings. Raven’s laughter carry to him as he approaches, but it is aimed down to the two children seated on the wide steps of a stoop that faces out into the square.

“Charles!” he hears cried excitedly, and it isn’t Raven - it’s the older of the children, a kind-eyed young girl with rich red hair.

Charles stops before the child’s knees, quirking an eyebrow and sporting an exaggerated bow. “The fair Lady Jean,” he puffs. “Lovely to see you as always, my dear.”

Jean claps her hands together and grins. There are smudges of soot,around her eyes and across her cheeks, her cheekbones more pronounced than last he saw her. Her smile, though, toothy and happy.

“Raven brought the fireflies,” she says, knocking her shoulder into the younger boy’s. “Only I got to see them last time and Scott was really sad.”

The boy is staring at the flourish of glow above him in an awed daze, but at the sound of his name, he meets Charles’ eyes briefly before shyly ducking his head.

Ah, that’s right, Charles had been the one to visit the children the past few nights, and it has been over a week since Raven could escape her duties in the garden to visit with her fireflies. She cares just as much as Charles, if not more, and it has been much harder on her. They’ve both come to love the many children who live throughout the district - a little boy by the name of Kurt who loves to climb things, Kitty, who is always baking them food, and the sweet and lovely Marie, among so many others.

The next moment, Raven is swooping down to tickle the end of her dress against Scott’s face. The boy starts giggling and tries to bat her away.

“Raven, no!” he squeals, hiding his face in Jean’s arm and leaving it there. A few of the fireflies come down to land on his shoulder, buzzing faintly and trying to get a peek at his face.

With her free hand, Jean runs her fingers through Scott’s hair. Her eyes aren’t nearly as bright when she turns them back on Charles. “You have to leave now,” she says, voice low. “Don’t you?”

Charles makes his way over to Raven and makes a grab at her hand before she can fly upward again. She wants to stay as long as possible, surely, and he wouldn’t put it past her to attempt to prolong their time here. When he turns to face the girl, he tries to smile. “Sorry, love, but we really must be off. I need to speak with Raven, not to mention we have fae children, same as you, waiting for us at home. And you, fair lady,” he remarks, mouth twisting into a grin. “We’ve kept from your work long enough.”

He gives the basket set beside Jean a pointed look. The girl and boy have a routine during this part of the day, wandering around, selling newspapers to anyone kind enough to trade a scarce few pennies. The papers are rolled up and tied, the print folded and near illegible, but, cocking his head, Charles believes it to be the headline from three days prior, around the time that the fifth murder had been announced. News travels so much slower in the outer district, it’s a wonder they’re given the benefit at all.

Raven seems to finally accept this. She flicks a wing, dismissing the fireflies to make their way to the garden. Still, some linger, hoping to accompany Raven on her way back.

“It was nice to see you two again,” she calls before taking off with Charles in tow. The children can be seen waving their farewells until they have disappeared around the corner of the building.

“ _Raven_ ,” Charles nearly hisses, ducking into the overhang of a nearby window. “I’m sorry, but - this is _important_ , slow down.”

She has grown up considerably since their first spring, faster than should ever have been expected of her. The blue of her scales are just as lovely, if not more so now that she’s fully grown into them. But that also means he cannot treat her as the child that she was. Likewise, she cannot ignore the duty they’ve taken up for the children in the night district, for all the people here.

Raven changes direction so fast she nearly knocks into him; together, they sink down to the windowsill and press close to the glass to keep from falling off. Charles drags his hands up from her waist, a steadying touch, to take hold of her arms.

“It’s Shaw,” Charles murmurs, his throat suddenly dry, “he just received word of a seventh murder.”

Her smile is gone in an instant, and her face shutters. The nights have grown much chillier as winter takes hold of the town, and for a fraction of a second, Charles beats down the compulsory urge to berate her for wearing one of her dresses instead of something warmer.

“I’m worried,” she replies, hushed. She dips her head forward and lets it knock into Charles shoulder. “I’m so worried, Charles. What does this _mean_ , what can it -”

He moves his hand to pet at her hair. “Raven,” Charles says weakly, unable to form a response.

She swallows, reaches up to squeeze his hand in hers. “We have to watch him more closely. Shaw is just one man, but he’s a man with prejudice. He must think it someone from this district, lowly _cattle_ that they are,” and she spits the words, all of them direct from Shaw’s mouth. “He’ll go on a witch hunt to prove it, I just know it.”

Charles cannot say he disagrees. “We haven’t the time,” he whispers into her hair, pressing a kiss there. “We’ll go back, speak to Emma. She’ll know what to do. Either that, or we’ll come up with a plan. If this keeps happening - it’ll only get worse.”

He allows Raven another few minutes to sniffle and rock against him, and when she finally manages to calm herself, he takes her hand in his and they set off once again into the familiar darkness.

*

The truth about Emma is this - as Charles has grown older, he’s come to respect her to a great degree. She can be prickly, grudging and sometimes vapid, but as Charles has slowly taken over Moira’s duties in teaching the younger fairies, they’ve had to spend that time together, and, truly, Emma is a brilliant teacher. She is thorough and determined, though perhaps a bit strict, and he has grown to revere her ability to command the attention of flighty young minds so easily.

When he and Raven return to the garden, they find Emma at work with the children amongst the roots of one of the great oaks. This afternoon must be a good day in terms of the children’s mood. They are not as rowdy as they tend to be, and they appear to be focused on the lesson, for once. Earlier, Emma had told Charles she would be lecturing them on the meaning of their first winter, then seguing into the plants that will thrive best in the coming months.

“Younglings,” she says, stern though not unkind, walking along the grass before the tree roots. “I do hope you are paying attention.” Her lips quirk into a smirk, teasing. “There will be a test.”

The children all groan at once.

Little Ororo, who has been dozing in the back row, startles terribly.

Emma clasps her hands at her back and waves them off with a flick of her wrist. Today she has forgone one of her usual white gowns for a blouse and tight-fitting pants - the same color, of course. Always with the white. “Class dismissed. Be back in an hour.”

All of them scurry away in a matter of minutes. As soon as the last is out of sight, Emma’s shoulders relax, and she turns on her heel to level Charles and Raven with a small smile, her head tilted in greeting.

“Please tell me you have good news,” she huffs.

Charles offers a smile of his own, but it is brittle and falls away quickly. “I’m afraid not.”

She arches an eyebrow, though the delicacy of the move contradicts the way her jaw clenches. “Shaw?”

He nods. “Another of Shaw’s men has been found murdered.”

“Thank you,” she responds. “For letting me know. This... is unprecedented, but with the way things have been carrying on the last week, we should have expected it.”

It was a decision Charles had shared with Raven, to include Emma in their spying on Shaw and the going ons in the night district. Emma had known the very night that... the very night everything _changed_ , for Charles. The very night the two of them had come to an understanding, and Emma had not been angry with Charles for the many times he had snuck out of the garden, for going over the wall at all. No, that night, Charles, feeling like he was deteriorating from the inside out, had been crying when Emma found him hidden amongst the pond reeds. And it is there that she had sat with him, let him tell her all that happened, and, without judgement, had placed a fine-boned hand on Charles’ shoulder and dragged a thumb gently across his collarbone.

Somehow, Charles always knew she would understand. For Raven is not the only one who, in her quiet moments, can be found gazing at the human cottage with a telling sadness in her eyes.

Not only is Emma intelligent - and her opinion valuable because of it - but she is currently the eldest of all the fairies. Of course, her physical appearance has not changed much for as long as Charles has known her, but, in becoming friends with her, he’s discovered that she cares more about the fae in her charge than she lets on.

She could be trusted.

Now though, Raven shifts on her bare feet and frowns at the ground. “There must be something we can do,” she whispers, then, louder, “We’re fairies, we have magic. Can we not do something to protect people when the time comes?”

Emma considers her for a moment, her hands coming to sit atop her hips. “Our magic is old and powerful in its own way, more so for those who learn to master it. But... not in the capacity you’re thinking. Fairy magic is harmless - innocence and growth. Protective magic is not something we could control, nor have the kind of power to wield.” Emma gives Raven a pointed look. “You were paying attention for that lesson, weren’t you?”

Stiffly, Raven nods, but her jaw has set. She won’t give up so easily. “What now, then? Sit around and wait for the inevitable?”

Emma shakes her head. “I’ll consult with the other elders. There are some spells that could prove useful if executed correctly, but in the meantime, the best we can do is continue watching Shaw. But, if it comes to that, we’ll find a way. We’ll protect the children - fae _and_ human.”

With that, Emma flies off, leaving Charles and Raven to their own thoughts, their own plans.

If it comes to that, they will do what they must.

*

The following morning Raven volunteers to take Charles’ place at the capitol. Though it obviously pains her to give up any chance to see the children, she must realize that she is in no condition to be around them. Because unlike Charles, she has never been very good at hiding her anger and frustration. It is imperative the children do not find out, to do so would compound the worries they face daily.

Leave the subterfuge to Raven, then. The chance to stew in her own thoughts will do her some good.

As Emma looks into the problem of protection magic, they are left with very little else to do in the interim, and so the start of the day sees Charles once again slipping into the night district. Neither he nor Raven had a good time of getting to sleep last night; their worries plagued them through the night and most of that time was spent tossing and turning in the nest they now shared between themselves, far enough away from the other fairies that the sound of their constant shifting became almost maddening against the quiet. Of course, now, his tiredness has him feeling more than a bit slow and heavy as he makes his way through the district.

There’s not a single human milling about the streets this early. After so much wiggling, Raven had pronounced remaining in the nest counterproductive, and so they found it still resolutely dark when they departed. At the very least, this means Charles can leave gifts at the window of every child in the district before they wake, given the will to do so. Tired he may be, but the very thought of the children’s delight at waking to the sight of flowers - the likes of which they so rarely get to see - sets his heart aflutter.

Charles finds the silence he is met with rather comforting, and the next street he turns onto, spread out before him with the scattered glow of streetlamps, is layered in the faintest impression of a morning fog. Today, the path he is following to the square is not one he takes often. It is one that only in recent years he has been able to draw near to, let alone pass through, and an even longer time since the idea of it had his chest clenching so tight he thought he might stop breathing entirely.

Recent rains have left the aged cobblestone dark in patches where water has puddled, and there’s a thickness to the air, as certain as the winter chill. Slowly, a small section of storefronts comes into view, intermittent the apartments and shod-together houses that span the breadths between. A streetlamp on the corner casts light over the edge of a staircase alongside the first building - damp wood, yellow light pooling across the first few steps.

When Charles looks to the sidewalk some ways ahead, he starts, his wings snapping forward to stop himself mid-flight. Cool light spills from the music shop’s large windows. It isn’t something one would expect this early in the morning, early enough, in fact, that he imagines first light has only just begun to touch the garden back in the day district.

He cannot say he didn’t _know_ that the music shop had been sold to new occupants, because he did know. He remembers the day, sometime after he started passing by the shop when he could, that he saw humans inside it for the first time in over a decade. This was several months ago now, though realistically it might have been close to a year.

It had been the greatest surprise of all to find the humans to be Armando and Angel.

Charles had not looked upon their familiar faces in some time, but he has grown used to seeing Hank on the edge of the garden, often tending to the plants that grow around the cottage, though it pains Charles to watch the boy - a grown man, now - from afar. No, that pain never stops. But in recent years it has become clear that Hank’s parents no longer live there with him; Hank presides over the garden and its care by himself.

He has no mind as to where Hank’s parents stayed before they moved into the flat above the shop, but it was a distinct pleasure to see them again, and even more so that they cleaned up the shop and reopened it. It’s just - strange, is all. In the times that Charles has passed by it, he has never once seen it open this early.

The windows are foggy when he approaches, blurred with the condensation that hangs in the muggy air outside, and it’s harder for him to see much past the glass. A large, dark and distorted shape moves just on the other side of the window, backlit by the shop’s lights. Charles flinches backward before he remembers himself - whatever human it may be could not possibly see him. Still, he flutters forward in small increments as he re-enters the circle of light cast about the sidewalk.

The human has moved across the space set behind the window, stopped, then retraced its steps to the opposite side of the shop. Charles watches its movements, trying to discern the human’s identity. When the human drew close to the window, he could just make out its eyes, the shadow of its skin - Armando, likely, moving about the room as he sets up for the day.

It wouldn’t do to remain here any longer, Charles knows, and at once he steals himself to take off again down the street.

He is only stilled when his ears catch it - a scattering of faint, lilting notes that float down to the sidewalk.

But that’s -

There’s a weightlessness in his chest, then, a quickening tightness that is almost painful against the fluttering jump his heart gave the moment the sound registered.

Although Charles _has_ come by the shop a number of times during his trips to the district, he hasn’t dared enter. He can scarcely remember how the inside once looked, let alone how it does now. So maybe it is this thought - that he _knows that sound_ , knows it as he knows his own heart - that is hurting him so. For he has not been inside the store since... since that time he has begged to be forgotten.

But this, the beginning notes of an instrument Charles believed, before this moment, that he would never hear played again...

It begs certain memories to be brought to mind, unbidden.

He’s hurrying around the corner before he realizes what he’s doing, sinking down onto the bottommost step of the old staircase. He must get his wits about him, drag forth his best veils to smother those thoughts, those recollections of blurred images and vibrant, warm emotions. For only those veils, in his mind, can save him from his heavy breathing, nearly tipping over into hyperventilating as he is now. His throat hurts, his chest, his stomach - all clenching and suddenly, achingly sore.

His eyes sting with tears and he hunches forward to bury his face in his legs. The sounds continue - a song swelling to its climax, one he’s never heard played before, but is like claws in his gut all the same. And he can’t -

Charles unfolds himself shakily, his next breath trembling out of him. The song has ended. It’s _over_.

He throws a searching glance upward along the side of the building. There are three small windows on this wall, each one higher than the last, and he thinks, when he squints, that he can just make out the topmost where it sits with its shutters propped open.

Yes, _that’s_ where the music came from. That is how it reached him down in the street, which - the attic, the window to the attic is _open_ , and the shock he feels at the realization, that should keep him sitting where he is, not _flying up to it._

When he peers inside, the attic is dark and cold. Charles takes a deep breath before he allows himself to drift inside and finds it still creates a puff of white air in the space before his face. The light provided by the streetlamps is even fainter so far up, and that means he can make out very little in the enclosed room. Furniture is sparse, though of the little that does remain, he can just make out the white of the sheets that cover them, sooner collecting more dust than seeing the light of day again.

On the far side of the room, an open door leads down into a familiar, sunken stairwell. Charles does not hesitate to enter it; he finds himself navigating it by memory rather than sight. The stairs take him down to the second floor landing, the door of which is shut, and without much more thought he is continuing on, quieting the beat of his wings, and his glow, best that he can.

Another song begins playing just as Charles reaches the bottom of the stairs. Through the open doorway, he can see out into the main room. He draws close, hovering, and grasps at the doorjamb with unsteady hands to keep himself from dropping.

Much has changed in the little shop since Charles last laid eyes on it. Back then, the owners had not been able to afford keeping it open. In his memory, it has been left to the dark and ever-growing dust, only the occasional candle atop the family’s well-kept piano there to light the way. But here, now, the artificial lights in the ceiling chase away every shadow in the room.

Charles cannot recall there ever being color to the room - without seeing it lit like this, it is impossible to know for sure what it looked like before. Surely, its new tenants have repainted the walls. They are a comforting cream color that gives off a certain welcoming warmth. That, along with the shelves filled with equipment and various musical paraphernalia, all of which that had once been made of black iron, are now built from wood. Instantly, he knows it to be Armando’s doing - the man was always a very skilled hand at carpenting and furniture-building.

Speaking of, Armando’s voice trickles into the stairwell, carrying over the soft music. “...and my wife found it in the attic when we moved in.” Confused, Charles leans his head further into the room. Armando must be speaking with another human, but - where? He had been so certain that it was only Armando, and now, who else could it be, if not Angel?

The second song is heavier than the first - careening around the notes like a tide, a gentle back and forth almost like a lullaby, seeking to guide any listener into slumber. It is no less beautiful for that, perhaps more so. When Armando speaks though, the notes immediately cut off.

“Do you believe it to be in good condition?” Armando continues. His voice is louder now, and Charles is able to locate him not far from the stairwell, bent over a counter as he wipes it down. “As I said, neither of us have an ear for the piano, and we feared the damp air and dust might have damaged it beyond repair.”

The room lapses back into silence. Charles dares to inch forward out of the doorway. He’s never felt comfortable out in the open with humans around, though he knows to fairies the idea should be foolish. More than anything, he wants a peek at the other human occupying the room.

The piano is not in the same place it had once been, now pushed up against the wall and to the side of a small fireplace. There’s no fire currently lit, but a faint gathering of ash dusts the area between it and a low-lying couch. The human in question is a young man dressed in black, his back to the stairwell where he sits before the piano - impossible to see his face. The only part of him that gives anything away is the tense line of his shoulders.

“Mr. Eisenhardt?” Armando again, words colored with confusion. He looks up from the counter, over to where the man is sitting stiller than death with his hands hovering over the keys.

When the man finally speaks, his voice is surprisingly deep; he has an accent Charles can’t quite place. The man, he is beginning to suspect, is not from anywhere around here. “It’s tuned,” he responds at last.

“Good,” Armando says, “I’d hate to get rid of it, if that were the case. It’s a beautiful instrument.”

The man’s hands continue to run along the keys without playing anything. “Yes. I’ve found them to be... uncommon - outside of town.”

He does not saying anything else, and Armando leaves him to it. After another drawn moment, in which his long fingers drift over the keys in front of him, almost reverent, the man presses down, and a new song fills the air.

It starts quiet and slow, building to something greater though no less soft for it, almost timid in its nature. The man’s hands are not quick; he is in no hurry finish, but all the same, the flow of the song is quite lovely. Charles finds himself drifting closer despite his fears. He feels that he has heard the song before, or, perhaps, something similar, but - no, impossible. If he dared count, he’d find that he hasn’t heard a piano in over fifteen springs.

An image lurches to the forefront of his mind, unbidden. The edges of it are distorted, frayed, and it is slow to come into focus, but when it does Charles is almost sickened by the strength of it. In it, he sees the subtle half-smile of a young boy, perched at his father’s knee. And it is the clarity in the boy’s eyes, vivid with unbridled affection gone soft in the low light, that has a sob riding high in Charles’ throat.

The memory is discolored, reshaped by years of desperate concealment beneath his veils.There is the boy, an ethereal being in the glow he gives off, so much like a fairy the sight of it rings with agony, and there is the rapt awe that washes over the boy’s face as his father begins to play the piano. The boy had played the song for Charles, once, but in this memory, the boy’s eyes cut to Charles, and he tilts his head as if to say, _this is what it should sound like_.

At once, reality creeps back in, the last tendrils of the memory fading away into nothing. Somehow, the song, the one from the memory, is still playing. And it’s like a full-body tremble - the realization that the song had been there all along.

It’s the man. The man is playing the same song.

As the last stanzas trill and peak into a fluttery crescendo, the notes, together, are struck full with grief and an aching, desperate loss. Charles heart beats once, twice, then a third, and the song becomes nothing more than a whisper of fingers on keys before it peters out into nothing.

The subsequent quiet barely registers, not with the uncomprehending shock settling like dead weight in Charles’ bones.

Across the room, Armando claps. “Hey, that was incredible! Where did you learn to play like that?”

The words have the man’s head turning to the side, so fast he must have forgotten there was anyone else in the room. In profile, his face is like a painting, gestural, sharp lines and an angular brow.

When the man speaks, his tone is cutting and low. “I need to leave,” he says abruptly, already hurrying to gather his bag. He makes very little noise as he stands and takes the space between the piano and the front door in several long strides, then, quickly, slips out onto the stoop and disappears around the corner.

“Huh,” Armando says, looking for all the world like he’d been slapped, the shock there is so genuine. With a slow shrug, he goes back to his work.

But Charles, he can’t - his throat is too tight, the room too _warm_. There’s a scream lodged somewhere in his chest, throbbing in tune with his pounding heart.

The memory - the boy and his father, the _song_.

That man at the piano, however impossible  -

That man is Erik.

By the time Charles can breath again, he has fallen to the floorboards, arms wrapped around himself as he blinks through another surge of tears. His vision is blurry and he’s confused, so confused - but the longer he remains there, he knows the less of a chance he has at finding out _why._ He needs to know if what he just saw and heard was real.

Quickly now, Charles forces his wings up and beats them until he lifts upward. They feel weak, all of him does, but he’ll push himself past his limit if he has to. He makes it back up the staircase and out the attic window in record time, immediately plunging down into the open street.

It’s still empty, the fog not yet settled. Charles takes off in the direction the man had gone. All he can think is - there, _yes_ , thank the gods for the rain, because the man stepped through the murky puddles as he ran and left his tracks behind him. Following them is easy enough, and as Charles pitches left at a street-crossing, he catches sight of the man’s back as he slips inside a narrow alleyway.

The alley, upon closer inspection, runs deep between two precariously leaning buildings, and the end is blocked off by a high fence. There are no discerning markers on the brick walls or hidden amongst the dumpsters, but a slash of hazy orange light from the street catches on something metal hanging down along one wall. It’s a rusted-over fire escape, the ladder unlatched and hanging partway to the ground.

A window up aways sits open and it looks as though the ladder could easily be used to reach it. Charles makes short work of flying up for a closer look. Going inside, though - he swallows, physically shaking himself to go through with it. The room he peers into is darker than the alley below, but a light flickers in the hallway beyond, just on the other side of a door that has been left ajar.

The hallway, when he enters it, is neither notable nor distinct in any capacity, save the slanted steps of the winding staircase that curls around the corner, the lurid contrast of the water stains that make abstract murals of the walls. And there’s the other door - a shadowed fixture watching him from the opposite end of the hall. Every inch that falls away as he approaches it sends a coil of fear shivering up his wings, a known quantity by this point, that Charles so carelessly lets his curiosity and burning need for answers make him vulnerable.

The fluorescents give off the faintest buzz, dimming and brightening in turn, and Charles allows the ambient noise to be a distraction, willing his body to keep moving forward. When he does reach the door - lines in the paintwork where the coat has been stripped of the enamel, as if fingers had scratched down it too many times before - he puts out a hand, only the slightest tremble to his fingers, and sets it upon the wood. The barest hint of a _click_ snaps along the door, so subtle and near indistinguishable from the other sounds in the hall, yet so simple a fact that he can feel the smallest vibration of it against his palm.

 _It hadn’t closed all the way_ , he marvels. His eyes widen as the door pushes inward with only the slightest puff of space opening between the doorjamb and the lock, just enough for Charles to slip through without bringing any more notice to himself.

 _Quiet,_ he reminds himself. _You’re small, so small. Quiet thoughts, no one can see you._

He enters into a very small room; calling it an apartment would be far too generous. If nothing else, it’s a bolthole, furnished with only the sparsest furniture - a bureau against one wall, and, off center the middle of the room, a mattress lying upon the floor. The lighting is no better than in the hallway, but the air is more stale, somehow, smelling of rusted piping and the mildew he spies along the window ledge.

Charles’ heart is at once pounding in his throat; he hadn’t noticed the man in the room - no, he hadn’t noticed him _enter_ it. Not until the man had already stepped from the only other door in the room and the creak of it closing behind him had given him away.

The man who is - could be -

The man who passes by Charles without seeing him. No less desperately, Charles wishes that the light was better, that he could make out the man’s features aside from what he’s given in limited shades of grey. He has yet to see the color of the man’s eyes, the shape of his mouth. Because that would be most telling of all, wouldn’t it? That would give Charles his answer, his useless, unnecessary answer. Because _this_ , his coming here - this is all for not. Charles has simply forgone all reason on some terrible illusion his own mind provided. A _lark_.

For now, he watches the man with questioning eyes. He had been correct in his initial assessment; the man is not from town. Surely he would recognize a man as strange and calculated in his movements as this.

Very few foreigners are allowed in, Charles knows. The regulations are strict, and, if anything, spying on Shaw has taught him that the yearly average numbers somewhere in the thirties. Most are those who have family here, or got out and have soon returned. Why they would come back, well, another mystery, given just how much harder it is to leave these walls than to enter.

He’s snapped back to the present and the barren room by the scrape of a drawer, the man since walked over to the bureau. Odd, being that he only now notices the man is shirtless. The door the man closed must have been a bathroom.

Charles watches in fascination as the man retrieves something from deep inside the drawer, the defined muscles between his shoulderblades and down his backside flexing with the movement. It’s... some sort of bundle, wrapped haphazardly in a dirtied piece of clothing.

The man moves to the mattress. His barefeet plop noiselessly against the floorboards, as quiet as every other thing the man does. Then he folds down on the mattress and sets the bundle between his legs.

Charles finds himself struck with wonder, and he makes to move forward; he catches himself before he makes that mistake, landing as gently as he can on the far end of the mattress, too afraid to land on the floor where his wings would disturb the dust and the man might notice.

A soft sigh escapes the man’s lips, something he must immediately regret, even alone as he is, for his mouth tightens and his eyes - dark beneath the shadows - twitch from the bundle to the hand resting on his knee. He flexes the fingers one by one, just breathing, and uses the other hand to continue untying the wrapping. Finally, the cloth pulls away, and its contents...

The first is a black dagger that the man raises before his face, turning it over slowly. He spares it no more than a brief once-over, really, before his gaze snaps back to the mattress. The man tosses the dagger down on the other side of his leg and reaches for something else that had been wrapped in the bundle. And though Charles may find the light poor, there is just enough to catch a hint of silver, turned over as the man traces it with his fingertips and Charles gets a glimpse of it for the first time.

It hits him then, a rapid squeezing in his gut like having the wind knocked out of him, the ground ripped from beneath his feet, his breath torn _away_ -

He’d know that cigarette case anywhere.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the man’s finger reaches the clasp. It opens with little spectacle, just another small, unremarkable thing in the small room.

Maybe Charles should have known this, should have _always_ known. Unremarkable, inconsequential - but hadn’t he always believed it, or at least, all those years ago?  
  
For a fairy, their birth flower is like their soul. How could they, then, not even realize it? To be in the same room once again, to see it, with their own eyes -

The glow of the flower is no less arresting than he last remembers. After the man opens the case, he picks the flower from it with a steady hand, lifting it closer to his face. It sends the barest flickers of white and lavender up his cheekbones and his eyes, and oh, _oh_. Charles is caught short, breathless and aching, by the familiar color of them.

The man’s jaw flexes, his shoulders resettling as he relaxes. The breath he releases ruffles the petals, and he huffs when he notices, only causing them to tremble more. He doesn’t say anything in that moment. He only brings the fingers of his other hand up and brushes them down the petals.

Charles shivers. It’s almost as if - no, but that’s not - he can feel the man’s fingers ghosting across his skin, as sure as if it were _Charles_ he were caressing.

His breath catches, a wounded noise jumping up his throat. Hoarse, raw, he whispers, “Erik.”

It should be impossible given all that has transpired between them, all that was lost and everything after. But, when that name surfaces, the very moment he realizes he said it at all, the man’s head snaps to the side as if - hearing something.

Those same grey eyes flick around the room, but again, they pass right over him.

Impossible, it’s _impossible._ The thought plagues him for a long while afterward, well into what amounts to night in a place where it is never anything but and the man has settled down to sleep. Charles watches him, trying to memorize the lines of the man’s face, no more peaceful in sleep than awake, and he finds he is unable to slip away until some time later, but by then, the truth is no less real.

*

Returning to the garden is more tiring than it should be. Charles feels sore all over, a hollow ache that tingles from the base of his wings to their tips, and the very second he crosses over the wall, he lets out a hitching breath of relief and dips low to the ground. He doesn’t feel any better when he reaches his nest; not even the sight of it filled with fresh leaves - likely Raven’s doing - can make the aching stop.

He’s almost grateful that she isn’t there to greet him. Raven would know the instant she sees him that something is wrong. Charles hates to imagine what he looks like now - ashen, his body no longer able to spare the energy to even tremble, let alone force a smile for her.

She’d think it has to do with the children, of course. Charles had all but forgotten them after his revelation; he hadn’t been able to leave Erik, couldn’t even take his eyes off the man’s sleeping face, not for hours, and by then the night had grown so late he worried Raven would keep herself up waiting for him.

Charles folds down into the nest and buries his face in his arm. The possibility of falling asleep and waking to find it was all a dream is terrifying enough that it doesn’t come quickly. He’s still awake a little while later when Raven returns to the nest, when he picks up the pinkish glow of her wings long before she settles in beside him.

He considers, briefly, pretending to be asleep. He could avoid it, leave it for the morning. But Raven has been so worked up lately Charles would hate to do that to her.

Stealing himself, he waits until she finishes rearranging the leaves on her side of the nest to her liking, then he shuffles onto his side, peering up at her through the locks of hair that have fallen in his face.

“Hi,” she greets first, offering up a smile. She has a firefly in her lap, and Charles is struck dumb by the memory of the first time they met - a cool spring night so unlike this one, when things were so much simpler and the world wasn’t able to hurt them as it does now, safe here within the walls of garden. It’s stupid, he knows. Neither of them has thought of the garden as safe in some time.

Raven is old enough to look out for herself. Charles needs to stop thinking of her as she used to be, a little girl not yet grown into her own scales and at a time in her life when he was the only one who had accepted her for it. Now, well, the other faeries respect her for it, the children look up to her in awe - they wish they could be nearly as beautiful. That had taken time, of course. Raven had to accept herself first; the others followed.

“How did it go today?” he asks, angling the words into the crook of his elbow as he rubs his eyes against the soft skin there. He tries to say something else but it only comes out groggily and mumbled.

She pokes his thigh with a toe. Then she pauses, perhaps a moment’s hesitation before she presses both her legs against his. Hers are slightly cold, but Charles has always been the one who gave off heat like a furnace.

“Nothing new,” Raven whispers. She pets a hand down the firefly’s head, cradles it to her chest as she lays on her side beside him. The firefly chirps, its antennae shivering beneath Raven’s chin until she bats them away and hushes it. “I’m worried though, Charles.”

Her eyes shine in the dark with unshed tears.

“It’ll be alright,” he tells her, his hand settling on her cheek. “You’ll see.”

“I’m worried,” she says, “and I’m afraid.”

“Raven -”

“No, Charles, just listen for once!” she whispers fiercely. “Something bad is going to happen, I can feel it. You know what it means when I get a feeling.”

He does know. The first time it happened was their third or fourth spring - he and Sean were playing by the pond when the branch on which they had been mock swordfighting snapped and the two of them landed in the water below. It hadn’t been a problem for Charles, but Sean didn’t yet know how to swim. The result had been near disastrous; only Raven came flying out of the reeds to pull Sean out in the nick of time. How she knew - well, later he told her she had felt something like a tingling in her wings and fingers, urging her to find Charles on the other side of the garden.

It happened two more times after, a memorable accident involving Hank and the blender and the second -

The day Erik left.

She hadn’t said anything to him about it, and she regrets it to this day, that she never thought to warn him of a tragedy she couldn’t begin to name.

“I feel a darkness stirring,” Raven says, then, fingers stilling along the firefly’s back. “It’s worse when I’m near Shaw, and I’m afraid it means - something. I’m not sure what, but I don’t want to find out.”

Charles nods. “There’s something about that man...”

Raven grimaces. “Agreed.”

She changes the subject quickly after that and asks about the children in the district. Charles isn’t sure why he does it precisely, but he finds the words unwilling to leave his mouth - he cannot tell her about Erik. Instead, he describes meeting various children in the vaguest of terms, and she gives no indication of catching the lie.

There’s a darker thought curdling in the back of his mind. He wishes he could call forth his veils and smother it into oblivion because - no, he’s only just gotten Erik back, he _can’t_ \- if Raven were to find out, she’d come to the same conclusion and try her best to keep Charles from going back to him.

It cannot be coincidence that Erik returned at the same time that the murders started.

Even after Raven has dropped off to sleep, Charles lies awake. It’s a constant litany in his head, an attempt to drill the question in and, perhaps, allow for a flare of hope to flicker to life in his chest. He closes his eyes and tastes the words, “It can’t be. Can it?”

*

Charles gets even less sleep than he had the previous night. He feels bone-weary, strung out into the thinnest sliver of himself; his morning routine of stretching his wings, normally a simple enough task to get through, is tedious and time-consuming. Thankfully, Raven is tired too, closed off in her own thoughts. She doesn’t pay Charles much attention throughout the beginning of the day, and he counts his blessings.

It was decided some time ago that Charles is to take the younglings through their morning lessons, after which Emma takes over for the afternoon and evening. It seems a bit unfair to him that Emma should shoulder so much more of the teaching weight, but Moira has assured him time and again that for all Emma’s complaining, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

Now though, Charles feels like he’s spent the night soaking in a mud puddle, and his head might as well be filled with cotton for all the good it’s doing him. It’s no better for his health of mind that Erik occupies a constant bubble of worry at the center of his thoughts.

He bumbles his way through the first few lessons - the physiology of trees and the lunar cycle, both fantastic in their own right, but not so much for the way Charles’ stomach is twisting in on itself. Because not only is his body being disagreeable with him, he’s also finding it hard to stay focused.

As the morning quite literally drags on, he keeps promising himself that _just another hour, just one more lesson and I’m through for the day_. Of course, then he remembers there’s something else he’d forgotten is on the lesson plan, and skipping it would only ruin the schedule for the rest of the week.

It is this dilemma that finds Charles spouting off innocuous facts about _ajuga reptans,_ commonly known as the blue bugle, or carpetweed, sometime after the children came back from lunch. Emma hasn’t arrived to take over yet, and Charles can do little else but cling to the last vestiges of the topic he’d been leading on herbaceous plants, just before the children scampered off and returned to him restless and unagreeable - the tail-end of the sugar-high Moira surely had a hand in. Really, he needed to have _words_ with that woman.

Now that the children are more alert than him, they’ve come to realize just how tired he is - specifically, every time he says the wrong scientific name, or mixes up the herbs and their uses.

Twice, Bobby pipes up to correct him, and he’s been hyperaware of Ororo looking at him sideways since five minutes into the lecture.

This part of the garden is quiet this time of day, and he hadn’t realized how unnerving the acoustics are around the enormous roots of the great oak - his voice carries loudly to the gathered children, and - urgh, he sounds _terrible_.

Emma’s arrival that next minute is a godsend. He deflates and cuts off what he had been saying abruptly, offering her a watery smile he hopes conveys the immensity of his thanks. If she notices anything off about him, she doesn’t comment.

The next logical course of action would be to make his way back to his nest and force himself to sleep - he can’t begin to explain just how bad of an idea that’d be. For one, there’s no telling if he’d run into Raven again, and secondly, he _burns_ with the need to see Erik again. And gods forbid, he has to be quick about this. If any other fairy catches him before he slips out, he would very likely be sucked into a conversation or another task.

Right. So - the wall. He’ll retrace his steps back to the hole in the wall where Erik is staying. He’ll -

He doesn’t know what. But surely it’ll strike him when he gets there. Now, the only thing that matters is seeing Erik again.

Charles makes it out of the garden with an astounding ease; no one appears to see him go.

When he was younger, Charles pestered Moira incessantly with his questions. Most of them pertained to humans, of course, but it wasn’t until he became friends with Hank that he learned the answers to the endless questions he had.

On one such occasion Hank had told him about a thing called _courting_.

And if there was one thing he had taken from his lessons as a child, it was one thing that human’s had in particular, one thing that fairies, supposedly, were never experience the same way.

In the time Charles has had to let his mind wander back to Erik, it’s become abundantly clear that Erik can’t see him, can’t remember Charles - but there’s also the slightest glimmer of hope that, somehow -

Erik could remember again.

It was possible, wasn’t it? The moment in Erik’s apartment, when he caressed Charles’ birth flower - and the fact that he kept it to begin with still sets Charles’ heart in juttery lapses. And the thing that struck him most about that moment was that Erik _heard_ him.

Fairy rules are meant to be broken, hasn’t Charles realized that by now? And yes, there’s the chance, there’s _always_ the chance.

As he makes the trek to the place where he remembers Erik’s apartment to have been, he can’t help but feel that little bit proud of himself. Sometime in the early hours this morning, lying awake with Raven sound asleep beside him, he came to the conclusion that... if, as Moira once told him, humans are just as able to have innocence as fairies, then it makes sense that Erik should be able to get his back. When he forgot Charles that first time, it hadn’t been Erik’s choice at all. And maybe that means...

Love. Hank had described it as innocent, once, waving his hands about in one explanation or another - the boy had loved to talk. He had looked over to Raven as he said it, not that Charles has time to consider the exact implications of _that,_ but it stands to reason that love could bring Erik’s innocence back.

Yes, he is proud of that one. Raven would surely think it insane a notion, but... Charles finds Erik in the apartment again, and he finds he cannot look away, not for hours after. The man leaves a few times, but he doesn’t go far from the apartment complex, simply walking about the district. He passes by the music shop a few more times, the district square where Charles can usually find little Jean or Scott, and occasionally visits a tiny cafe tucked into one of the apartments there. It strikes Charles as odd, somewhat, but he’ll take any part of Erik he can get.

As for the courting that Hank had once spoken of - apparently it’s a thing humans do when they’re falling in love, or as Hank put it “making their intentions known.”

That’s it. Charles will have to do just that.

Erik’s morning activities are much the same as his night; over the next few days, Charles sneaks away from the garden when he can, and he begins to learn Erik’s patterns. There are long hours spent walking around the district, but there are also quieter ones, where Erik will come back to the apartment and do seemingly nothing at all. He’ll stare out the sole window, and his eyes will go vacant.

What Charles would give to know what he’s thinking in those moments.

Charles has no basis to go on for this courting business, so he goes with his gut. Simply flying in Erik’s face and calling his name doesn’t work - at least, not like that first time - so it’ll take something more physical to get Erik to notice him. Of course, the first thing Charles chooses to leave for Erik is one of the smooth pebbles that lie at the bottom of the pond. It certainly reminds Charles of the many days spent splashing in it when the two were boys.

He leaves it on the windowsill. It takes a while for Erik to notice it; that day he arrives at the apartment to find it empty, but the window is open a few inches, and it’s easy enough to slip inside. Charles nearly dozes off by the time Erik finally walks in the door.

The man makes a few paces of the room, setting his stuff down and folding his coat. But then Erik’s gaze passes over the window, and it catches there, on the pebble, sitting unassuming and unobtrusive on the edge of the sill.

“What...?” Erik’s brow draws together, and he walks to the window, picks the pebble up with careful fingers.

Charles, meanwhile, had taken a seat in the spot just beside where the pebble rested. The fairy leans back so as to better see Erik’s face high above him.

There’s a long moment where Erik rolls it in his palm and tests the weight of it. Then his surprise morphs into a tiny frown, and drops his hand, shoving the pebble into his trouser pocket.

It’s discouraging, how could it not - but Charles was never one for giving up.

His second attempt isn’t much in comparison, by way of the physical. In more recent years, Charles has become a better hand at a few of the fae instruments. It was mostly Raven’s doing - or coercion, really - she insisted that he learn to play the pan pipes, something about the learning experience being better together.

Charles was terrible at the start, but his skills have smoothed over under, surprisingly enough, _Emma’s_ tutelage.

The day after his failed attempt with the pebble, Charles comes to Erik later into the night when he expects the man to be asleep. And he is - or trying to. The room is dark, but the pale glow from the streets drifts through the window, enough of it that it shines upon Erik’s body, curled up on the mattress. Erik’s eyes flutter open every so often, and he snuffles into the pillow, grunting softly as he turns over on his other side and re-adjusts.

Erik, Charles has come to realize, is not sleeping well. Charles can’t say he’s been faring much better.

Charles alights on the windowsill and pulls the pipes from his hip. There’s a multitude of songs he could choose from, but he goes with one that reminds him of the Erik’s lullaby. He starts playing, and the change is startling - the room does not seem quite so dark, so empty and lonely. That’d be the magic of the pipes, but there’s also the way Erik finally relaxes into sleep as the song draws along.

By the time Charles finishes, Erik is fast asleep.

It isn’t much, but it’s a start.

It’s only by the same time a few nights later that Charles begins to worry his courting isn’t working. He’d had the feeling, but... hope wasn’t something he gave up on so easily. Several more nights had gone by without any more ideas coming to him, and so the ritual of his visiting Erik, playing his pipes to bring Erik a good sleep, has been the only thing giving him reason enough to come back.

Another idea doesn’t come to him; it doesn’t have the chance, because that same night - Erik isn’t in bed when Charles arrives. That isn’t even the oddest part, either. Charles slips under the crack in the window and happens upon Erik zipping up a rather large, dark duffle bag.

Which is odd enough in itself, but then he barely has time to catch up with him before Erik is rushing out the front door. Impulsively, Charles clutches the pipes snug against his hip and darts forward. He makes it to Erik just before the man shuts and locks the door, and as he turns to walk down the hall, Charles takes the opportunity to dive into one of Erik’s coat pockets.

There’s a lurch, a brief moment of weightlessness, as Erik traverses the fire-escape, but then it melts into the bumpiness of Erik’s footsteps. It becomes monotonous after a while, and Charles is tired enough to almost nod off; he feels safe enough to do so, and though the duffle was certainly new, his first assumption was that Erik was simply going for another one of his walks.

It isn’t until Erik stops again, and a deep, unfamiliar voice speaks up somewhere close, that Charles jerks awake.

The voices are muffled, and Charles is still fuzzy enough with sleep that he barely registers it when Erik starts moving again. He does recognize Erik’s voice, when it picks up - the tone of it lined with thinly veiled fury.

What -

Charles stands up on his tiptoes to peak his head out the pocket flap. “...it was me, you know,” says the other voice, the other _man_ \- Charles doesn’t know when it happened, but they’ve entered into a room he’s never seen before. The two windows on one wall are covered in tarp, so the only lightsource in the room is a candle sitting on a nearby table.

The strange man standing before Erik is... grizzly, for lack of a better word. He’s large and broad-shouldered, greasy long hair and eyes that shine completely black in the poor light. The man must have thought whatever he’d just said to be funny, because he grins with all his dirty teeth.

“Creed,” is all Erik says, the threat in his voice now something low and deadly. “We can do this the easy way...,” and Charles feels more than sees it, the second Erik reaches into his coat for a knife, “or the hard way.”

Whatever happens next, Charles doesn’t see it - Erik lurches toward the other man and the movement sends Charles tumbling back down into the pocket. Charles can only hold on for dear life, fists jammed into the closest material he can reach.

“It was me!” comes the man’s voice, laughing. He’s insane, he’s -

Charles is jostled violently once more, and then it all goes still again.

“Now then.” Erik’s voice. Hard and unyielding. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know. What is Shaw up to? What is he planning?”

Shaw? Why would Erik -

When he manages to slip his head over the edge of the pocket again, Charles’ wings go still where they’ve tucked against his back. Somewhere in the tussle, Erik managed to get a length of rope around the scary man’s hands and feet, bounded and hogtied. Erik is crouched over him, and he nudges the sole of his boot against the tarp that’s spread out on the floor - the one the man’s been set on.

The other man laughs again and bares his teeth. “Little Erik, you don’t think he knows?”

Erik backhands him across the face. “What does Shaw have planned?”

“Shaw,” the man, this Creed, only grins, arching his neck to show Erik his throat. He grunts. “Shaw was just looking for a reason to kill them.”

Pressed up as he is against Erik’s warm body, Charles feels it when Erik tenses, at that. “What are you _talking_ about?”

“Your parents,” Creed elaborates simply. His black eyes roll back to Erik, but he doesn’t struggle, not with the way Erik has him tied down, his weight holding Creed back from so much as squirming. “It was all your fault. Little Erik, it was _you_ -”

Within the span of a breath, the knife in Erik’s hand, the one Charles had so easily forgotten, goes plunging into the center of Creed’s chest.

Charles chokes back a sob at the sight. He drops back heavily into the pocket, sucking in helpless breaths.

“I’m coming for Shaw,” Erik says next, deceptively soft. “It’s too bad you won’t live to see it.”

There’s a sickening schlurp as the knife embeds deeper, sinking in to the wide-edged hilt. Charles doesn’t know this, see it for himself, until he’s forced himself up and scrambled from out of the pocket.

He flees, fast as his wings can carry him, and he doesn’t look back.

It’s Erik.

The murders. It’s all _Erik_.

*

Charles doesn’t even realize his wings have taken him back to the garden until his feet are touching soft grass, just on the inside of the wall. The thought is gone in an instant, not unlike a bright flash, and Charles can hear nothing but the quickened staccato beat of his heart, thrumming in his ears.

He feels drained, shredded into tiny pieces that could never be put back together.

As soon as he crumples to the ground though, he raises his head from his hands just in time to see Raven hurtling toward him before they collide.

“I’ve been searching _everywhere_ for you,” she says, fast and frantic, breathless with it. The force of her hitting him in the chest sent him careening backward onto the grass, Raven sprawled on top of him. Her eyes are impossibly wide with their faces this close, and just as their gazes meet she sweeps her hands up to clutch at the sides of his head, her fingers tangling in his hair. “Where have you been,” she continues in a rush, “Charles, _where have you been_?”

She can’t know. That isn’t possible - she _can’t_.

Charles tries to breathe past the tightness in his throat. The way she looks at him is searching and pleading, and he doesn’t know why, if she doesn’t know about -

“Charles,” she says again, “I couldn’t find you and I - I went to the capitol alone, even after we said we wouldn’t, but I had to. It’s - it’s Shaw. I saw him, he slipped up, he -”

“Where?”

She plants her hands on either side of his head and straightens her elbows. “The clocktower. One second he was with Janos in his chambers, arguing, the next he vanished. I was scared to leave, because I didn’t know where he was and he could have seen me, but when I was leaving I saw him walking into the clocktower - Janos wasn’t with him. He looked angry and he had,” he eyes widen, she breathes, “ _dark magic_. All around him, like this great big cloud.”

Charles is stunned. This is what they’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? Shaw messed up, and now they know what he’s hiding. That doesn’t make the danger any less real.

Dark magic. Shaw could likely kill with just a thought - he could hurt them, he could hurt _Raven._

“He’s getting frustrated,” Charles says, feeling like someone else had said the words instead of him. “He’s going to do something soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but we have to -”

Oh. Oh gods. Erik.

Charles has to find a way to warn him, and fast. But how? When nothing he’s done has _worked?_

Raven moves to sit up but not before she searches his face again, and she must find something there because, “Charles, what is it?”

“It’s,” he swallows. He can’t hide it from her any longer. “Erik. The murders, all of them.”

She flinches back at the name, paling. Weakly, she asks, “What?”

Charles maneuvers upward into a sitting position, turns to face her. “Yes,” he says shakily, his voice quieting. “Erik - yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I found out. It was only a few days ago, when I went to see the children. I heard someone playing a piano in the old music shop and when I saw his face - I knew. Raven,” he smiles, and it hurts to keep it there, “he came back.”

They sit there, both their breathing steadying out for several minutes before Raven is able to respond. “Charles... all those people...”

He finds himself blinking back a rush of hot tears. “The people who helped Shaw murder his parents. I saw - I know what I saw.” He leaves it at that.

“He came back for Shaw.” And the way she states it, so knowing, nearly breaks him.

Charles has to look away from her eyes, the ache there that is all for him. “I’ve tried to talk to him, warn him, but it’s no use. He can’t see fairies anymore.” He can’t see _me_. “There has to be some way.”

They both look up at the sound of a new voice. It’s Emma, flying toward where they sit before the wall. “We were worried you’d gotten hurt,” she says by way of greeting, giving Charles a sincere smile. “I’m glad to see that’s not the case. But Charles, I overheard what you said just now about - that boy you once knew, was it?” Her eyes turn sad. Really, it doesn’t suit her lovely face. “I want you to know that there _is_ a way. You can get to him before Shaw does.”

“Why?” He’s shocked as soon as the question hits the air. But, he ploughs on, determined. “Why would you help me? Why save a human now?”

“Because,” Emma says simply. “Shaw is mobilizing and his magic is the worst kind. It all makes sense now - our being here, the reason the town is as you say.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?” Raven’s eyes snap to Emma’s face and she frowns. “What do we have to do with all of it?”

“There’s no time to explain, we have to do this now.” Emma nods sharply and offers Charles a hand up. He takes it. “You said you want to warn him? Well, there’s one way I had considered using once upon a time. No idea if it works, but we have to try, all right?”

Raven rises to her feet. “Where to?” she asks.

The corners of Emma’s lips twitch, as close to a grimace Charles has ever seen her. “That other boy, the one from the cottage? You said he wrote everything about fairies down. Wherever he kept it all, we’ll need that.”

Charles wants desperately to check his sister’s reaction. Instead, his gaze cuts in the direction of the cottage. “Let’s go.”

*

With the three of them, getting inside the cottage proves to be no trouble at all. The evening has grown late enough that Hank, if he’s here, will already have gone to bed, and won’t hear the sound of the window being shimmied open.

“This way,” Charles whispers, dimming his glow. He leaves just enough to be able to see the hallway in front of him. It’s only now that he is thankful for the many years he and Raven spent running through these halls and that the memories never left him. The shadows are near impenetrable, this dark.

It’s short work for him, at least, to locate the door to the room that belonged to Hank as a child. Just as Charles expected, Hank has since moved into the larger one down the hall. This is abundantly clear the second they enter the room - the skeleton of the bed frame is in one corner, the mattress missing, and the shelves along the walls that once brimmed with books are now tidy. Hank, he can only imagine, must have moved the extra books to the attic if he didn’t get rid of them entirely.

Charles prays Hank kept the journal. So much hope is riding on little more than sentiment. When Hank forgot about fairies, did he forget the importance of the journal - how precious it once was to him?

They decide quickly that the best course of action is to spread out and search. Raven takes the book case closest to the door while Emma takes the second, and both of them hurriedly begin scanning the titles by the light of their glows.

The journal, Charles recalls, was nothing notable. The binding was dark and thick, the strange material of the outer cover littered with creases from years of wear. It wouldn’t have anything written down the side or front - Hank was much too careful with it for that. If anything, it would stick out against the other books on the shelves.

After a cursory scan of the books on his assigned shelf, Charles turns away and huffs a frustrated breath. The room is not much warmer than outside, but still he wishes they didn’t have to be in here much longer. Something feels... off - is all.

Before he can much consider the thought, he catches sight of a familiar desk. It’s the one Hank used to love working at, tucked into the alcove by the bed, same place it’s always been. The only difference is that, now, the lamp and pencil jars have been removed, along with the other knick knacks Hank kept on it for years. From here, Charles can see where the chair has been pulled partway from the desk. The edge of a narrow drawer peaks out from behind it.

He reaches it in a matter of seconds, drawing his hands across the wood in search of the handle that would allow him to open it with ease. And... yes, _there_. Charles pulls the drawer out as far as the chair allows. But when he looks inside - he finds it hard to smother a burst of laughter. His glow immediately slants across the cover of the journal.

“Over here!” Charles calls over his shoulder. There’s a flurry of wingbeats as Emma and Raven join him at the desk.

“Quick, grab hold of it,” Raven instructs, dipping forward to do so. Together, they manage to lift it out and onto the desk.

Emma wastes no time in opening it. The paper is thin and turns yellow beneath Emma’s white glow, revealing the cramped handwriting that fills every page.

Charles lands beside her, and Raven isn’t far behind. “What are you looking for?” he whispers, unwilling to speak louder, with the room so quiet and dark. He hadn’t even questioned that Emma needed to find the journal; now it seems strange for her to want to.

“There’s something in here, something that a child who once lived here found before all written record of fairies disappeared.” She sends Charles a look, her eyebrows raised. “You mentioned that once, that Hank was never able to find anything. I don’t think it was the books that were lacking. I think someone took them.”

Of course! It seems so obvious now. They don’t even need to say who would have motivation to do such a thing. Shaw clearly has known about the fairies all along; the question is why, _how_?

Raven, who up until now had been pacing the length of desk behind them, drops her chin on Charles’ shoulder and flicks her eyes over the pages as Emma turns them. “Why would Hank have it? And how do you know he even put it in his journal?”

Emma simply wrinkles her nose. “If Hank found Angel’s diary, he found the spell. Of course, he wouldn’t have known what it meant at the time, but didn’t he hide all things fairy in these pages?”

Another question jumps to the tip of Charles’ tongue - _a spell?_ \- but before he can, the next page flips over to reveal a scrap of paper much older than the others, the edges curled by age.

“This is it!” Emma says as she steps forward to press the edges down flat. Sure enough, fine cursive print stretches across the scrap in neat, faded rows, like stanzas from a poem.

Raven makes a curious sound, but with the way her chest is pressed against his back, Charles can feel just how fast her heart is beating. “What does it do?”

There’s a bit of surprise and excitement mixed together on Emma’s face when she glances back at Raven. “It’s -”

“A transfiguration spell.”

No, no, _no_. All three of them snap to attention. Emma, for what must be the first time in her life, pales, and Raven’s fingers dig into Charles’ arms hard enough that it’s painful.

“I’ll admit, I haven’t seen one in ages, but still, I’m a bit disappointed,” a lantern illuminates a row of perfect white teeth, a smile that’s meant to cut. “So desperate. All you had to do was ask.”

Sebastian Shaw stands in the doorway. The lantern he holds in one hand casts his shadow up the wall of the hallway at his back, tall and monstrous and utterly terrifying.

“You see,” the man continues airily as he steps into the room. “I already know all about little Erik Lensherr’s heroic return,” the man tilts his head, the gesture almost inhuman, and begins walking his fingers along the bed’s headboard, “the games he’s been playing, the trouble it has only caused me.”

They’re terrified; Shaw knows it, which is why he comes to a stop at the opposite side of the bed. But Charles is nothing if not stubborn; he won’t be cowed by a monster like Shaw. Instead, he takes a deep breath, speaking loudly and, he hopes, strongly, “If you knew, why sit by like a coward?”

If anything, his words bring a certain playful light to the man’s eyes. “Why intervene when I can watch him destroy himself so beautifully?”

Charles startles back as if he’d been burned. Hoarsely, he manages, “What?”

“You act as though you know everything,” Shaw continues with a chuckle, “but in fact you know very little.”

“We know about your magic. We know what you’re doing -”

“What I can do, hmm?” He’s amused now. “Tell me, what have I gotten up to with my dark magic? It’s not so different than fairy magic, that of a warlock.” He pauses then, deliberate, letting the word sink in. “Really, I couldn’t have made this town possible without your help.”

At Raven’s sharp intake of breath, Charles’ resolve begins to crumble. “We would _never_...”

“Oh, but you would,” Shaw says, tone gone light. His fingers continue to trail along the metal rod that constitutes the headboard, before he lifts his hand and makes a show of brushing nonexistent dust from them. “Your very existence fuels my power. Did you never pay attention to your lessons, child?” He tsks, then, and it makes Charles bristle. “My magic _devours_ your innocence. And with the way I’ve kept those ungrateful peasants in the outer district, I am only able to consume more. Nice, isn’t it? I hear they mature much faster there. What a pity to lose it so young.”

Charles recoils, drops one foot back a step. He knew there had to be a reason to keep the outer district in their eternal night, but he hadn’t imagined it could be to hurt them - to take from them so much more than they should ever have to give. It has a sharp bolt of anger stirring in his gut, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. When he turned to face Shaw, Raven had moved slightly behind him, and it’s reassuring when he finally notices the steadying hand she’s pressed between his wings.

“And Erik?” he asks, more boldly, somehow managing to hold Shaw’s beady-eyed gaze. “What do you want to do with him?”

“What will I do?” Shaw smiles his eel-grin. “Simple. The further Erik falls into his own darkness, the more my magic will take from him until there’s nothing left at all.”

Raven’s hand presses harder; it’s the only thing keeping Charles from succombing to a full-body sob.“You mean he’ll be -”

“Dead, yes,” Shaw finishes, matter-of-fact. He tilts his head again, his hands, now that they’re both unoccupied, twisting in the lapels of his suit-jacket to adjust it. “I’m growing awfully bored with this, shall we make things a bit more exciting?”

The lantern, Charles only now notices, is floating at Shaw’s side. The second the man’s fingers snap, it flickers, and a forceful gust of air pushes into the room, knocking the fairies back. Emma and Raven scream out at the same time; before Charles can so much as turn his head they’ve both been propelled backwards into the wall. He can only stare at them in dawning horror, frozen where he’s fallen down on the desk, as tendrils of moving shadow curl over Emma and Raven both, effectively gluing them in place. That hadn’t been air - the shadows in the room had come _alive_ like the tentacles of some twisted living entity.

“Charles!” Raven yells down to him.

Charles whirls on Shaw, his wings trembling with agitation - _anger_. Shaw can’t do this _._ He _can’t._ “You better not hurt them!”

“And why shouldn’t I, hmm?” The man is only more amused than before. He watches Charles with narrowed focus, the sounds of Emma and Raven’s struggles playing second fiddle to the shiny new toy he’s been handed. “What could an insignificant little fairy do to stop me?”

Shaw is goading him, Charles knows it. But he can’t ignore it, can he? The man knows he can’t be beat, but - there’s something else there underlying the smarmy words. There’s something Shaw wants.

“I..,” Charles finds himself at a loss, panic making his chest tighten.

“I know you have a... connection, shall we say, with Erik, “ Shaw continues. “It’d be a waste to not make use of it. How about I make you deal?”

All the shadows in the room are moving at Shaw’s feet, circling, dogs brought to heel but no less ready for attack. Charles doesn’t know where to look - Shaw, or the manifestation of his magic in a room far too small to hold it.

“A deal?” Charles swallows, his throat clicks. There wouldn’t be a point in brightening his glow, not in the face of Shaw’s power, but all the same, he _wants_ to, he wants that little bit of comfort.

Shaw draws closer, one step and then another. The lantern follows and the shadows slither after. “You have something I want, you see. So - a deal. You want to become human to win over our little Erik, hmm?” The closer the man gets, the more sure Charles is that there’s nothing in his eyes, not a hint of emotion or humanity, only hollowed out recesses where shadows dwell. Shaw holds out his hands as if to say _ta da,_ nothing up his sleeves. “So be it.”

“And what do you get out of helping me?” Charles is no idiot, but neither is Shaw. He rises to his feet and squares his shoulders and wings, for all the good it will do him.

“Ah, yes. There are parameters, of course.” The man sighs, put upon, as if he were entertaining a child that somehow continues to disappoint him. “I give you a week, no more, to make Erik fall in love with you. You do that, and,” there’s a twinkle of glee in Shaw’s eyes, a trick of the light, “you stay human. What I get? Well, simple. I want _the_ flower, the one you so carelessly gave to that fool.” His smile becomes more indulgent. “You give it to me willingly and you’re scott free. Not that you’ll need it any longer when you’re human.”

Emma shouts the beginnings of a protest, Raven not far behind, but they’re instantly muffled by another curl of shadow over their mouths. Charles spares them a glance, suddenly nervous.

What could Shaw possibly want with - his _birth flower_? The very idea of this man, this warlock - inhuman, he’s _inhuman_ \- touching Charles’ flower -

Goosebumps break out along Charles’ skin, and he stifles the fierce urge to rub at his skin, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach and like he’s covered in something disgusting.

But to save Erik? What he wouldn’t do to -

“What if I fail?” Charles asks slowly, his eyes careful on Shaw’s face. “What if I can’t make him fall in love with me?”

He doesn’t want to even consider it an option. It would _hurt_ , like nothing else he’s ever felt before - to have what he once had taken _again_ -

Shaw is watching him with an eerie sort of patience. “You fail, you turn back into a fairy - and I get to drain Erik dry.”

Between that second and the next, the shadows slipping around the floor jump to attention, sliding closer to where Charles has drawn himself away from the edge of the desk.

Shaw lifts a single finger - the shadows freeze in place. “Do we have a deal?”

At Charles’ back, the noises of Emma and Raven’s muffled protests grow louder. They want him to say no, they want him to let Erik - let him - _no._

The shadows are shivering with the need to lurch forward, and Charles worries what they will do when they have him, when they have Emma. When they have _Raven._

He cannot let that happen.

“You,” Charles manages weakly. It’s difficult to drag his eyes from the swirl of shadows, salivating at Shaw’s feet, to meet the man’s cold eyes. “You have a deal.”

Shaw’s answering grin in slick as an oil spill.

Something happens then, a hairsbreadth of a second between that and the next, and though the shadows do nothing more than continue their sluggish prowl along the floor, something else takes hold of Charles. It’s cold and like an electric current running beneath his skin, bringing him painfully to his knees. His body feels like its bleeding from the inside out, bile burning in the back of his mouth - he can’t move, can’t _speak_ \- he can’t even raise his wings.

“Oh, did I mention? You’ll be just like any other human, and they don’t remember fairies, now do they?” Shaw takes a damning step forward, close enough to the desk to touch. “You won’t remember any of this. It’ll be easier. Ssh, child, it’ll be so much easier to let yourself forget.”

Shadows arch up the walls, oily thick, and this - Shaw’s smile, fading as the edges of Charles’ vision begin to darken.

Then the pain becomes overwhelming, and the world goes black.


	3. Chapter 3

The moment the showerhead comes on is the same that Erik tilts his head back to glare sleepily at the ceiling. At the touch of the cold water, his fingers twitch _just_ so - he fumbles the shaving cream, a tinny _crack_ against tile. Slowly, he drops his head to watch the can roll between his feet.

The shower is on now, at least, the water running over his shoulders and down his back, though he can’t suppress the quirk of his jaw as he reworks a glare for the floor. Just then, the whine of the pipes gives way to a rattle, and the bathroom eases back into silence and the rudimentary hiss of the water.

His faculties are blunted this early in the morning - too damn blunted, he _hates_ mornings. He doesn’t, however, spare anymore time in retrieving the shaving cream and the razor from the shower ledge.

 _Fuck Logan_ is the first thought that trickles through Erik’s mind, followed closely by, _fuckin’ hate mornings_. He mutters it between breaths as he works his way through shaving two-day old scruff. It’s difficult - he only has a shard of glass the length of his hand to see by, a broken piece from what was left of the mirror, scattered across the bathroom floor when he first arrived in the apartment; incidentally, he’s managed with far less.

Last night, he recalls, not without a grimace, he’d gone and gotten himself repulsively drunk. He hadn’t even made it into the poorly-lit alley behind the pub, had vomited, only halfway out the door, on the sidewalk out front. But that was only after he’d disposed of the body.

The body.

_You don’t think he knows?_

Erik slams the flat of his hand against the shower wall. His shoulders dip with the movement, and he lets it happen, his breathing coming faster as his head hangs there between his arms.

_Shaw was just looking for a reason to kill them_

His vision is spotty, holes in old film where the reels have caught and melted through.

Creed was a murderer and a liar. But what he said - it has to be true. Creed was the one to kill Erik’s parents, though not by any compulsion of his own. That was all Shaw.

Erik’s lips pull back, the beginnings of a snarl.

He already had the feeling Shaw is up to something, but, for all Creed held back, he ended up giving Erik confirmation of it after all. And whatever that is...

...wasn’t part of the plan.

Erik has been back in town for just nearing two and a half weeks. Procuring the right papers to get past the front gates had been a bitch and a half - more so because Shaw’s laws make it nigh impossible for those with no previous connections within its walls, and Erik entertained no delusion that he could gain entrance with anything but an alias. So - Max Eisenhardt he became. Just another means to an end. His end, if he has his way. His and Shaw’s.

As of now, only nine men know his real identity, or should he say _knew_ \- eight of those men are now dead. The last one has only proven to be a pain in the ass. Telling Logan was, of course, necessary; he wouldn’t have gotten past Shaw’s front doorstep if not for that impossible man, but then again, there is also the factor of certain items in his possession, namely those that once belonged to Erik’s father and Logan acquired after his death. If only the man didn’t have Erik jumping through so many hoops to gain as much as a glimpse of them.

Erik’s fingers drag into a fist; he straightens and leans back beneath the spray of water. The only reason Logan has not been so forthcoming is because the man simply doesn’t like him much. That was apparent thirty seconds into their first encounter, the day Erik arrived in town and Logan provided him with his current lodgings.

A dilemma then; all of the men involved in the murder of Jakob and Edie Lehnsherr now dead themselves, fifteen years after the fact, and the only one left to take out - Shaw. Because it always comes back to that vile monster, doesn’t it? The same man who can kill whomever and however he pleases, cart off any hapless orphan left in the aftermath to civil mining colonies in the surrounding territories and not be dealt an inch of consequence for it.

As for a solution - there’s something amongst his father’s things that will allow him the upperhand, to figure out just what it is that has the whole of Genosha’s people eating out of the palm of Shaw’s hand - something that he missed. Erik needs access to them; if only Logan didn’t feel the need to be so damn _difficult_ about it.

It’s with a certain finality that Erik cuts the water off and steps out of the shower. He doesn’t bother  with a towel - he doesn’t own any, come to think of it - but he does grab a hand-rag and wipes it down the sides of his face. As he rubs his hair into some semblance of dryness, he fishes the first shirt he sees out of the suitcase he’d left open on his makeshift bed. It sticks to his back where his skin is still wet, tight as the shirt is around the muscle of his arms, though he doesn’t give it much more than a cursory thought.

It’s been... strange, recently. The past two weeks have been absolute hell with the amount of sleep he’s been getting, which wasn’t much at all up until three days ago.

As he buckles up his belt and pockets his keys, Erik looks over to the lone window in the apartment. The glass is murky with age, and it hadn’t taken long for him to discover it’s next to impossible to open save a scant few inches. It wasn’t until the last few days that he began to feel the oddest sensation whenever he drew near it, like he was being watched, a tingle that spread to the base of his spine. Or maybe it wasn’t even that - Erik would not have been able to sleep as well as he has if that were the case. It’s more of an... oddly _familiar_ feeling - the same he felt when he visited his parent’s old music shop for the first time since he returned.

He’d been avoiding doing so while his mission was of the utmost importance, but then he’d had a split-second of indecision that was all it took for a lapse in judgement.

He can’t recall what had been more of a surprise, the fact that Armando now owns it, that his father’s piano is still there, intact, or that the lullaby his father used to play for him - the one written for his mother in the days of his parents’ youth - came back to him so easily, as if it were a well-loved pet come to greet him home.

And he was, if just for the minutes in which the notes came unbidden to his fingers - he was home again. It was then that he had felt it, just as he finished the song. A presence he hadn’t felt in...

But that was then, on the cusp of a childhood long gone, far enough away that he has little memory of it save his parents’ faces, lost as they are in a sea of blurriness and _grey_. He can’t help but think about it, though, couldn’t help but feel the same presence he did that night in the shop again by the window, in some washed out hole-in-the-wall deep within the night district. He doesn’t know how it found him, but -

That’s just the thing. Erik glances sideways to the dresser. There’s the space where the keys usually rest, and just beside it is the leather wristwatch he uses to keep track of the time - a precious thing to have in a hellish place such as this, where there is no light of day to be found - but beside _that_...

A rock. No, no, it’s more of a pebble. He picks it up and rolls it between his fingers. Its surface is smooth, something he can only imagine was achieved naturally - running water; a river, perhaps. The grey color of it is marred with specks of black, and the shape itself is rather flat, a skipping stone. Although, his curiosity in regards to its origin is far outweighed by the matter of his finding it, right there on the windowsill the previous morning.

Strange enough to be worrying - how could it not? But when he first picked it up, he found it to be warm where it pressed against his skin, just like it is now as he settles it again in his palm. The worst of it had to be the pull in his stomach when he discovered the little quirk - a vague remembrance of the metal scrap he used to collect as a boy.

That line of thinking, of course, has no merit in his current goals; he’d discarded it quickly.

Still... another lapse in judgement has him shoving it into one of his coat pockets before he rushes out the door.

*

Walking the streets in the district, Erik feels nothing short of a ghost. It’s a surreal thing, being here now, memories and moments coming back to him with every step he takes. For fifteen years he dreamed out what it would be like when he returned - would it all look the same? _Be_ the same?

Would it be him that had changed?

Fifteen years of hate and self-loathing, and how powerless he felt, knowing it was all Sebastian Shaw’s doing, that everything Erik ever lost was at his hands - that cannot be undone.

For every night he dreamt of what was, he spent five more dreaming of what he could do if he came back. Even as a child on the cusp of puberty, he’d wanted nothing more than for Shaw to pay, growing older only turned his want for vengeance into something more defined; Shaw’s blood painting the floor. Though if Erik was more one for theatrics, he’d have it done the same way his parents were when he found them.

A gust of wind blows through the narrow street with enough force that Erik has to hunch his shoulders against it. His trilby falls into his face, and he re-adjusts it when the wind dies again, just in time to turn the motion into a tip of the hat as a young woman walks by with a child in tow.

“But I saw it,” the child grouses at her, and seems to dig his heels as he’s dragged along. “I saw it - the fireflies, momma! I’m not lying ‘cause Kitty says she sees them, too.”

The woman simpers, reaching down to pat his hand where its trapped in the crook of her arm. She rolls her eyes dramatically when Erik passes them, more than a bit miffed by her child’s behavior. It’s dark, of course, when is it ever not - but it’s amusing enough that he can just make out her lack of subtlety, when her eyes linger on his face for a few seconds too long; new faces are not all that common in the district, the laws being what they are.

“One of these days I’m going to find the troublemaker who started that story,” she tells the child, the sound of her voice growing faint as they get further away. “And we’ll see who is the liar then, okay?”

He imagines the two are on their way to the school. His own mother had been adamant that Erik be homeschooled, something she once told him his father was happy enough to allow; it meant that he hadn’t had many friends his age, or at least, none that he could now recall. So much of that time he spent with his parents in their little shop; it wasn’t until those last few years together, and the ones Erik remembered with the most clarity, that the shop closed and even that time was taken from him.

If he’s remembering correctly, the only two schools in the night district teach children up to the age of ten before throwing them out to work the streets in one way or another. That is, if the children can spare the time to attend. Most, he knows, can’t. That isn’t a luxury frequently allowed to those living in such poor conditions.

It’s all a part of Shaw’s work ethic - keep the poor and unwanted part of the population uniformed and hidden behind a high wall, while those he finds useful live in privilege in the center district. Informants Erik corresponded with in the scattering of mining colonies had as much to say about it. Shaw, apparently, likes to tell those in the night district that their way of living is simply how everyone in the town lives, and that is just how things are.

What Erik finds hard to understand is why nobody questions the night - constant, ever-present, always and unending. It wasn’t until he left town himself that he’d begun to question it along with everything else he’d ever come to know. Perspective, shall we say, did him well. Shaw has a long game he’s playing, and the manipulation of the night district is a part of it, but - what? And more importantly, _how_?

The square, when he turns into it, is empty save for those setting up shopfronts; sweeping front stoops and bustling about their morning preparations. One of the few that appear open is on the far side, a small cafe set into the corner of an apartment complex. _Marie’s du jour_ , reads the wooden sign that hangs before the door, just inside the brightly-lit seating area under the awning.

It’s early enough that only one other patron is seated inside, at one of the tables close to the door. The girl can’t be older than twenty, and she seems to be trying with little success to keep her eyes open, alternating between staring blankly at the book set out in front of her and sipping from a cup of - sludge, obviously.

“ _Coffee people_ ,” Erik mutters, the words dripping with disdain. He suppresses a grimace, though it’s not like anyone is around to notice if he did. The space behind the counter is noticeably empty.

Just as Erik slips onto one of the stools there, a door slams somewhere in the apartment above, loud enough to carry down. He stills, decides against taking his coat off - that would suggest he intends to stay longer than should be necessary - and tucks his hands into the pockets. His right hand finds the pebble, body-warmed as it now is, and he rolls it between his fingers as he waits.

A radio behind the counter is playing a static-rife recording of some pianist or another. That as a focus point makes it rather easy for Erik to close his eyes for a moment - a moment too long.

Another door slams upstairs, but this time it’s followed by a muffled yell.

Erik leans back slightly in his chair, eyes trained on the door behind the far end of the counter, the one that leads up into the apartment. When he checks the girl seated behind him, she is no less engrossed in her book and doesn’t appear to have noticed - or she’s simply used to it, and has chosen to ignore it.

Only a couple minutes must pass before the door opens, and a burly man in plaid stomps into the room. Logan hasn’t changed much since Erik was a child, a few more streaks of grey in his dark hair, maybe, and deeper lines on his face from scowling too much, but the man’s age has yet to show true. Not that Erik would know; when he tried to pry, Logan wouldn’t tell him just how old he really is.

As Logan walks in, he wipes a dishtowel over his hands and flings it over one shoulder. The man’s stride is loping and detestable as he swings an apron on and makes his way down the counter.

“Trouble in paradise?” Erik asks, allowing a small tilt of a smirk to chase the words when Logan finally notices him.

The man takes it in stride, grumbling, “My landlady, if you can believe it.” He flicks a glance up to the ceiling, and Erik half expects to hear more yelling. “Turns into a right spitfire ‘round time the rent’s due.”

Erik spreads his hands flat against the countertop, taps one finger. “I believe you owe me something.”

Logan’s bushy eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and he whistles low, flipping the dishtowel back into one hand as he begins cleaning glasses. “Hey wow, bub. Jumping shark already, aren’t ye? _Mi casa es su casa_ and all that.” He huffs and sends an odd glance back to the door he’d come in through.

Eyes narrowing, Erik hisses, “I didn’t come here to listen to you yap,” and _that,_ at least, has Logan snapping to attention. “I’m running out of time, if you recall.”

“Oh yeah?” There’s a whipcord tension to Logan’s shoulders now, but it settles again in a matter of seconds, and the man relaxes. “Well maybe this is just my point. I’ll give up the goods if you can act like a normal goddamn being for once in your life, and,” he holds up a finger, quelling the snarl on Erik’s lips, “have a cup of fuckin’ coffee.”

Oh, he hates this _insipid_ man. Where does he get off, knowing what - who - exactly, Erik is out for, what he plans to do, and yet continually choosing to aggravate him to no end. Not only that, but wasting his _time_.

He glares at Logan, but that only gains him another low huff of laughter.

“One cuppa joe, comin’ your way,” Logan says, nicking one of the pots off the burner behind him and procuring a mug from one of the cabinets. The coffee, when he pours it, is the same sludge the other girl had been drinking.

Speaking of - he throws the front door a sideways glance; she must have left sometime ago, because her table is empty and he and Logan are the only two left in the room.

Turning back, he flicks his eyes down to the mug and, grudgingly, lifts it to his lips, all the while watching Logan grin at him over the rim. The barest touch of it against his tongue is scalding, and - “ _Logan_ ,” Erik grits, slamming the mug down and glowering, the man’s laughter growing louder as he does. “What do you serve here, motor oil?”

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you, Lehnsherr.” Logan is still grinning, damn him. “Marie!” he calls across the room, right as the door up to the apartment cracks open again and a little girl in trousers and bright red rainboots enters the cafe. “Get this kid a cup of your finest.”

Erik doesn’t know what makes him angrier, Logan’s inability to _get to the point_ , or the fact that he insists on calling him _Lehnsherr_ \- which is utterly besides the point of taking an alias to begin with when Logan thinks he can spout it off whenever he pleases.

It’s takes a few minutes, but Marie grabs a different pot from a little ways down the counter and makes her way over, tossing Logan a smile before giving Erik a curious look. “Hi,” she says slowly, perhaps a bit too perceptive for a child so young. “I’m Marie. You know Logan?”

In all his life, Erik never spared too much time for children, and he certainly never entertained the idea of having one himself, not when Shaw has cast such an ugly shadow over his decisions since his parents’ deaths. There was never any time to do more than work hard in the mines for little pay and return home, alone, to the one-room hostels in the colony. And he hadn’t - hadn’t had the urge to sleep around like so many others would, paying for their cheap prostitutes in the intervening hours between fifteen hour shifts and the darkness of the mines they feared returning to.

In that way, it was like Erik never left the district at all.

“In a sense, yes,” Erik replies at length. It’s odd, really, that in the face of a child he feels the compulsion for honesty. “He knew my father a long time ago. But that was before you were born.”

Marie tilts her head, the look in her eyes now a clear gateway to some question she is close to asking. But before she can, Logan takes the pot from her hands and shoos her off.

“Last I heard, Jean was looking for you,” he tells her. She starts to voice a protest, but he moves one of his large, meaty hands to her arm and squeezes it lightly. “Don’t be gone long, alright?”

She gives Logan a flat look. Still, she lifts the hood of her shawl over her long brown hair and fastens it, resigned. The girl whispers something to the much older man, voice too soft to carry, before slipping out into the square.

When Logan turns around, he crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow, waiting.

“She yours?” Erik asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. He can’t imagine a man so old would have a child so... young. But it’s not impossible.

His gaze passes over the new mug that Marie set before him - what appears to be actual liquid, at least, and instead of a charred black color its more honeyed, brown mixed with white. He can’t believe it, for a second, but he’s honestly debating trying it.

Logan makes an affirmative grunt; he’s already walking back behind the counter, looking around for where he set the dishtowel. “Might as well be.”  
  
The room lapses back into silence, both men debating their next words. Erik taps the counter again, curls his other hands around the pebble still shoved inside his coat pocket.

“I’d like to get to the point of this visit, if that’s fine by you,” Erik says. He doesn’t want to be here a minute longer if he can help it. Best move things along, or try to, if Logan will let him.

For a long moment, Logan stares at the glass he’d picked up and begun cleaning, his brow furrowing, it only breaks when he reaches up to scratch at the heavy scruff trailing down his jaw.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “If you don’t mind too much though, I’d like to yap at you for one more minute.” His mouth curls into a toothy grin, only to disappear as fast as it had come. “Alright, sorry I gotta be the one to break this to ya, but these things take time. That piece you’re looking at, Jakob’s old desk? I don’t got it here,” Erik makes a derisive noise in the back of his throat, Logan only rolls his eyes, “but I’ve already sent a guy out to pick it up.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Three days, tops.” Logan seems to consider it, then nods. His face grows more serious, and he sets the glass down. “Listen, bub, there’s another thing - I don’t think you realize what you’re going up against.”

Anger bubbles up in Erik’s stomach, his mouth pinching. “You don’t think -”

“I think you got guts and the right stuff, the kind that can - will - take Shaw down,” Logan continues. “What I’m not so sure about is if it’s gotten through that thick head of yours that -”

Erik shoves to his feet and the stool clatters to the floor -

“- that, shit - you gotta know this is a _suicide_ mission.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Erik responds, only now realizing he’s raised his voice. The sound of it is too loud in the empty room. “You offered your help and I accepted, that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to dictate what I do with it. This isn’t about your family, your entire _life_.”

“Yeah, no,” Logan snaps. He cools, a moment, and leans against the shelf where the radio sits, flicking the dial off before he speaks again. “You’re right, this isn’t about me or what I think. It’s about you, bub. And you know what? It isn’t about my family, either, but it sure as hell _is_ about my - Jakob was my friend. I know he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

It’s only now that Erik can feel how hard his hands are shaking. “Don’t you _dare_.”

For Logan to even think that his connection to his father could - to _use_ that against him -

Erik shakes his head and turns away. He rights the stool, not wanting to have to meet the man’s eyes again. “I don’t care what happens to me,” he says lowly. “I just want Shaw dead - it’s the only thing that ever mattered.”

“Lehnsherr -”

“Three days. You’ll give me what I want, and that will be the end of it.”

Logan sighs, goes back to his work and mutters something along the lines of _fuckin’ altruistic pain in the ass_. Erik stands there trying not to sway in place, to fight down the lump in his throat and make his hands stop damn _shaking_.

No, none of it ever mattered. Erik always knew the risk, but more than that, he knew that taking down Shaw may very well cost him his own life.

He has always taken comfort in that knowledge, because all those years in the mines, he never once thought it a life worth living - not when had so little save for plans of revenge and hate bred in damp mineshafts. And after, were he to survive taking down Shaw... his imagination never went quite that far.

There’s the sound of the radio clicking back on, static as it resettles and the idle swells of a long-gone symphony crackle into the air of the cafe. Erik’s hands have stopped shaking, only twitching now, but he nonetheless feels flustered by the fact and shoves them into his coat once more.

He makes for the door with the intention of storming out, but just as he turns toward it - the door opens, the bell above it tinkling to announce a new customer.

The first thing Erik sees is blue; sometime later, he’ll find himself unable to recall anything else.

There were days in the mines that were far less kind than others, if kindness could have been measured in numbers; those who succumbed to sulfurous fumes or had one leg or another, an arm or maybe a spine, snapped in a tunnel collapse during any given hour. Measured, then, in the time it takes a man to break.

The song they’d sing to pass the time, propaganda - _coal for the cart, coal for the heart, fair Genosha’s new start_. They knew it, of course; a war and the widespread famine that came after, the destruction of the land and its division into territories - and at its center, Shaw’s crown jewel of Genosha, the golden city, where only poor miners who survive more than four decades below ground could hope to gain admittance. A fairytale, though none ever dared risk that fragile line between reality and hope.

But those days, yes, Erik remembers - he remembers the dark, the play of the light from his helmet across scattered debris and tired bodies. On one such day some of the other men decided to take their lunch in an area further up their current route. Erik and four others decided to save time and remain, but what they hadn’t anticipated was a cave-in that split the two groups and blocked them in. They tried to drill through it, at first, but the debris that fell from the ceiling of the tunnel - it had to have been fossilized rock of some sort, darker than others, and it took the shape of a wide slab six or so feet thick.

Their only recourse was to drill a new path around it. And they did, working tirelessly for another seven hours to do so, with no knowledge of whether the men who’d been on the other side were doing the same to reach them. Their only radio communications - dead.

It just so happened though that an hour or two in they broke through into an empty pocket of space, the clean oxygen trapped inside rushing out from the crack they’d made in the wall-face, fresher than any they’d breathed in their lifetime - probably more so than the generation previous and five more before that. It was there, in that pocket, not once gazed upon by man, that beautiful stone of every caliber shone back at them beneath the winking flickers of their helmet lights. The most predominant color had been blue; what they would later discover as a heavy deposit of sapphires ran along the roof and walls in natural formations.

Erik had never before seen anything close to a jewel, cut or otherwise, and he finds the clarity of the memory in a single image: the murky shadow that struck through the blue of a small piece he chiseled from the rock, the way it seemed to glow when he held a light beneath it.

He hadn’t been allowed to keep it. It was immediate property of Genoshan Mining Corporation - the same _GMC_ that branded every pocket of the average miner’s cover-alls.

But now, he meets blue eyes across a small distance of space, and the thought rings through his mind like fine silver tapped against glassware: _I never thought I’d see it again_.

“Oh,” a soft voice; blue eyes blink and the connection breaks. Erik is tugged back to the present. “Pardon me?”

The voice, the eyes, they belong to a short man stuffed into a raggedy grey sweater. He chuckles, reaching up to push the hair from his face. His jacket has - elbow patches.

He quickly drops his hand, settling it down on the satchel that rests against his hip, and smiles. At _Erik_.

Erik closes his mouth - when had it fallen open? - swallows, shocked still by the memory the man’s eyes brought forth in a ten second span of time. And he’s not disappointed by it, really, because the face behind those eyes is open and kind, to a stranger no less, but he can’t help but think they belong there.

“You’re kind of - standing in the -” the man gestures to where Erik is blocking the space in front of the doorway.

“Yes, I -” Erik shuffles out of the way, finally allowing the man to step in from the cold of the square. “Sorry.”

There have been so few times where Erik felt bereft of the right words, but right now, he’s at a loss for any at all. He resolves to keep his mouth shut, lest he spew any more drivel.

“Quite all right,” the man tells him, his smile curving into a full-fledged beam. Their eyes remain connected only half a second longer, the man’s attention turned to Logan as he crosses to the counter and orders a small coffee.

Logan does as asked with unbothered precision. Erik watches him, still standing in the doorway but unable to pull his gaze from the blue-eyed man’s back. Then Logan notices, damn him, and quirks one of his thick eyebrows.

Erik chooses to ignore it, gaze lingering on the smaller man until he wades into the cluster of tables and takes a seat by the window. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something familiar about -

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” Logan calls.

It doesn’t, but then again, once he starts moving Erik couldn’t have left faster.

*

That night, sleep doesn’t find Erik as easily as he has come to expect. He suspects it has something to do with the dreams that seem to rush forth, unbidden, as soon as his back hits the mattress, their touch like wind on fingertips, aloof and just beyond reach, the rustle of wings drawing up in flight and - curious, if not for the way they never quite look at him directly - a pair of bright blue eyes.

As soon as he floats toward the edge of consciousness, he jolts up in bed, panting. His naked back is drenched in sweat; he flexes his hands where they’ve fisted in the bedsheets to the point of discomfort.

He cannot remember when, exactly, but at some point during the night he must have pushed the mattress up against the wall. Tilting his head to the side has his cheek almost brushing the windowsill, and it’s easy enough to give into the temptation to press against it, resting his head as he heaves. He blinks, dispelling the clumps formed in his eyelashes, and flicks his eyes up past the hair that has stuck messily to his forehead.

The stale yellow light spilling into the room is from a streetlamp tucked into the building opposite, a low enough glow that it doesn’t reach far past the window, the scarce lines of it fading into shadow halfway across the mattress.

 _This - all of this_ , the thought cuts through the fog of his tired mind. _It’s driving me_ mad _._

For the second morning in a row, Erik finds himself getting ready at a truly insane hour. It can’t be much later than the day before, and it isn’t - he checks the wristwatch. The hour hand has just ticked past _VII_.

Growling low beneath his breath, Erik doesn’t bother with any lights and heads decidedly for the shower.

Yesterday was meant to be spent planning, but Logan’s stalling has set him back another couple days. And it really can’t be anything else - he clearly wants Erik to take the time to, as he says, _think things through_.

Erik scoffs, the movement nearly costing him a nick from the razor as he shaves.

He needs access to his father’s things, whatever it is Jakob hid from Shaw - and the very reason Shaw had him killed.

And that... will have to wait. It’ll be hard to tamp down the urge to track Logan down and throttle him, but Erik can be patient, if that’s what it takes. He needs to stay low just a little while longer and hope to the gods Logan hasn’t royally screwed him over. Because if Shaw _knows_ that Erik is coming for him, then -

He doesn’t have much more time.

Staying in the apartment is a moot point by now, he’s too restless for it to do him any good. Last night he’d spent a few hours going over his blades, sharpening them, and studying the curved dagger he hopes to drive through Shaw’s heart. But that leaves him little else to do besides wandering around the district as he has been the past week, when the chance has arisen in between his... more unsavory activities.

Then there’s the fact that Erik really can’t help himself, not when he feels a certain pull in his chest, the most inane of urges to go back to...

And so, roughly twenty minutes later sees him standing outside the music shop.

The wind in the streets is distinctly unrelenting, so cold that Erik’s resolve - to _keep_ standing outside the shop and deny himself for sometime longer - is nixed in favor of shuffling inside. His face feels stiff when the door shuts behind him, and damn it, he’s likely gone red all over.

He also can’t help the way he goes still, taking a long moment to draw in the smells and sounds, everything he can get from the place. He allows himself to breathe deep and it has his shoulders relaxing incrementally.

The front of the shop is a cluster of shelves that run perpendicular to the storefront, and in the furthermost corner he spies the register, though there is no other person in sight.

It was just a few days prior that Erik had taken the initiative to visit the shop for the first time since his return, and he’d been just as surprised by the fact that it opened so early as he is now. When his parents owned it, they never had a concrete open and close; most days his father would flip the sign in the window as late as eleven. There were never many customers during the week, and those that did were regulars or those they knew - making them welcome at any time. Sometimes neighborhood children would come to watch his father play the piano, or those who had been saving pennies for many a month might purchase a handcarved flute or recorder.

Occasionally a collector from the center district might pay a special visit to look at his father’s extensive collection of guitars, remnants from before the war that had been in the Lehnsherr family for generations.

Jakob always declined any offer to sell them, let alone anything else he considered to have too much sentimental value to place a price tag on, which is one of the reasons why the shop was closed down as prematurely as it had. Thankfully, Jakob was also a skilled clockmaker, and most of their income after that time came from his work on private orders.

Erik steps in amongst the shelves and lets his eyes trail slowly over the wares. He reaches the end of the first one and, between the spines of a row of books, he sees Armando on the other side, rearranging what looks to be a box of old records on the adjacent shelf.

Briefly, Erik considers leaving the man to it and carrying on a walk around the store. That might be rude though, and if he’s remembering correctly the way he’d rushed out the door in a panic the last time he was here, well - he best try and redeem himself for it.

“Mr. Muñoz,” he greets easily, letting a certain silk enter the words as he circles around the corner.

Armando tilts his head up at him from where he’s crouching and squints against the light, one hand curled around the bottommost shelf’s edge. “Oh, Mr. Eisenhardt, hey! Nice to see you ‘round here again.”

The man smiles kindly, fine laugh lines creasing around his mouth, as he continues to work - he appears to be organizing the records in stacks based on year.

Erik had been sure that Armando recognized him on his last visit. It certainly was strange, seeing such a close friend of his father’s after so many years, and unlike Logan, those years show on the man’s face. Armando is just as good a person as Erik remembers, though thinking back - yes, he hadn’t reacted so well when Armando made it out of the district. Though in Erik’s defense, he didn’t quite know the full meaning of it at the time - being caught under Shaw’s thumb, and for what. Armando only did it for his wife, his son - understandable to a point, especially now, knowing that Jakob had been given the same choice and declined. Logan told him as much.

As for himself, Erik can’t help but feel disgust - putting on a thin spread of a smile and donning the mask of someone he’s not; of Eisenhardt, a _lie_. “My apologies for leaving so abruptly the other day,” Erik feels his own smile waver, shake, something behind it close to cracking, but maybe it’s all in his head; Armando doesn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss.

“No problem, man,” Armando laughs. He claps his hands on his knees and looks away to assess the pile of records left in the box. “Were you after something in particular this time, or are you here for another go at that fine piano over there?”

Erik - Mr. Eisenhardt chuckles, “That fine piano, yes, and of course the good company,” he nods, then gestures with his chin to the instrument, sitting in the same spot by the fireplace. “You mind?”

Armando waves a hand in its direction. “With your sweet skills? Be my guest.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Erik very happily turns away, the put upon smile dropping off his face as his eyes fall on the piano once again. His hands are at his coat lapels before he realizes it, tugging it off his shoulders, and his trilby follows, folded into a neat pile he sets at the end of the bench. It isn’t so different than the last time he was here; his fingers have the faintest tremble to them as they ghost along the edge of the lid.

Out in the mining colonies, a thing such as this is unheard of. Very few have heard one played, not when radios are so hard to come by and even fewer stations remain in commission; less have seen the real thing. The grand piano, another remnant from Before, though one not so remembered in history books.

Three days, Logan says, and then after that...

One last time. Erik will accept whatever’s coming for him, if he can just - one last time.

The keys, when they depress beneath his fingers, when Erik pulls back a moment, startled, like he’s still a child, unsure if he can get the notes right with his father watching at his shoulder, like he’s back in the colonies and they’ve already sent him a mile beneath the dirt, what’s another two when he always comes back up and will one day have his revenge, when he sits back, unbuttons and rolls the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows, tucks in, they depress again, the notes hit the air and he begins to play.

For the life of him, he cannot say where the song comes from. Something he remembers from his first life, maybe, years and years down the line. Whatever it is, it sounds - tired, but there’s a bit of melancholy in that, deeper notes that follow a pattern of regret, that any glimmer of hope was left behind from the start; intentional, nothing left to hope _for_.

Finishing, the last notes pitter out and Erik is left blinking slowly at his hands where they rest on the keys.

Armando doesn’t clap as he did the previous time, and the presence, the familiarity he’d been struck with when last he played...

He doesn’t feel it.

It’s - gone. Left him.

Erik’s fingers flex, spread, long and bony, the same hands that are now uglied and roughened, covered in calluses from the pickaxe, the saw and the chisel, _years_ of it, all for his reasons to flee him _now_. Being alone hadn’t bothered him then, hadn’t - he clenches his hands tight enough that, by accident, a row of keys press down together, deep and abrupt, at the same time that, behind him -

“Sorry!”

His hands fly from the keys as if burned. Erik turns, but not before he schools his surprise into something cool and edged in anger.

“Did I - my apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

It snaps into place, somewhere in the back of Erik’s mind. Tossing and turning beneath sheets soaked through with sweat, twisting up in - dreams, the sound of wings and, for a second of a moment, being back in the mines with his fingers, soft and caressing - the color blue.

“I...,” Erik’s eyes flicker down to the man’s hands. They’ve made a mess of the end of his dress shirt where it peaks out from beneath a frumpy cardigan, wrinkled up from his worrying at it; the man - _don’t think of blue, don’t think of_ \- standing off to the side a few feet behind the piano bench.

“I’m intruding, aren’t I?” Erik glances up in time to catch the wistful curl of the man’s lips before it turns into something self-depreciating. “Again, apologies. I walked in and,” still not meeting the man’s eyes, Erik watches the bob of his throat as he swallows between words, the blush that flushes into being on those cheeks, “I happened to overhear you playing. You’re... very good, if I might say so, though I’m sure you’ve been rather well-notified as to that.”

Finally, Erik manages to coax himself into raising his eyes an inch further. As he does, the nails of one of his hands find purchase in his thigh, though it’s well hidden, tucked beneath the piano and out of sight.

“No,” is all Erik says. He’d smack himself right that instant if it weren’t for the tone of it; lost and sounding a bit more humbled than Erik has ever let himself be, a man such as him - as Mr. Eisenhardt, surely never _humble_.

The man tilts his head, then, that same flush still in place. “I know you - or I’ve seen you. Yes, it was at Mr. Howlett’s cafe yesterday morning.” He frowns. “I’m not being horribly daft, am I?”

“No,” Erik says again, but _this_ time, he corrects that nonsense before it can get away from him again. “No, I - yes, I mean. That was me,” then, slower, like he doesn’t quite understand the words himself, “you’re not wrong.”

The other visibly brightens, beaming now. “That’s right! I, ah, almost hit you with the door - but I did apologize for that, at least. Obviously I can never say it enough.”

Dazed, Erik can only swallow, nod, “Sure.”

How can a person’s eyes be that _blue_?

The man takes an awkward step forward, the smallest hint of chagrin to his features, and though it is horridly _normal_ and otherwise trivial a thing, something in Erik’s stomach is twisting up on itself.

It’s... fluttery.

Honestly, he’s never felt quite so betrayed by his own body.

“Here I go again,” the other chuckles as he approaches Erik and the bench, “making an utter fool of myself - I promise I’m not always like this. But I have yet to even introduce myself, so -” The man turns another dazzling smile on Erik, softened round the edges. “Charles. It’s been a pleasure to, ah, well, to hear you play that is.”

Beneath his collar, another faint blush has begun to crawl up Charles’ neck. Erik’s eye skitter off the area as soon as he realizes what he’s doing, because that’s - not something he _should_ be doing. Looking, in any capacity. Looking at _Charles_.

 _Stop it_ , Erik chides himself. _Think of where you’ll be three days from now, what you’ll be_ doing _. The outcome is the same you’ve wanted for years. It’s unavoidable._

Logan’s words - _it’s a suicide mission_ \- and now, by the strangest of circumstance and chance, Erik manages to stumble into, literally, the first person to intrigue him in years. There’s been nothing else like it, not since he met Magda at nineteen, experienced attraction for the first time and confused it for love - an idea she was quick to correct before they parted ways after no more than a month together and her family shipped out to a different territory.

But here, _now_ , Erik is afraid to admit it for what it is.

And gods - has Charles been holding his hand out to him this entire time?

Erik takes it gingerly, which is all wrong. It’s not like the man is made of dynamite.

“So,” there’s a brightness to Charles’ eyes that suggests he’s laughing at him. “What may I call you?”

“Oh - right.” Erik startles a bit, at that. “Erik.”

Oh fuck.

He has an alias for a damn reason - actually _using_ it. He isn’t Erik Lehnsherr here, he’s _Max Eisenhardt._

Hastily, he corrects, “Eisenhardt. Erik Eisenhardt.”

Close enough. But damn it, Armando will surely know the truth if he hears it. Erik takes the chance to flick his eyes around the small area set by the fireplace and the shelves beyond it. Armando doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight, though it remains to be seen if he’s in earshot.

Charles surprises him by gesturing at the opposite end of the bench. “Well, Erik,” and the way he says it, tongue rolling hard off the _k_ like he’d been paying special attention to Erik’s accent, has the last reserves of Erik’s will crumbling into nothing. “Is it alright if I sit by you? It’s fine if you’d rather me not, I was just hoping I could watch you play - you truly are wonderful at it.”

Erik nods jerkily, swallowing quickly to cover it. “It won’t bother me, no.” Not that he had expected an audience, nor can he remember the last time he did have one - his mother, likely, always overeager to praise him for his improvement. He can’t say he’s been complimented on his piano-work since, not until Armando that previous visit. Even then, it’d been a surprise in itself. His father had been the one with the talent, hard as he tried to pass it on to his son.

Erik felt some measure of discomfort at Armando’s compliments; they were given to Max Eisenhardt, for one, not _Erik_ , but there’s also the fact that he received them at all. It’s perhaps odd, then, that Charles’ profusive admiration and talking -so much _talking_ \- has Erik’s cheeks feeling rather warm.

He settles his hands back on the keys in front of him, careful not to let his and Charles’ arms brush after the other has taken his seat. Charles, for his part, is sitting as far away as the bench allows - which is to say, not much at all; a hand-length of space left between their legs.

“It’s odd I’ve run into you again so soon,” Charles muses, his voice taken on a softer quality as he watches the side of Erik’s face. “Small world? I’ve been told that everyone knows everyone in the district, but I guess now it makes sense.”

Erik hums; he isn’t paying complete attention to the words, preoccupied with the way his fingers are deliberating their next course. It shouldn’t be as easy as it is, how they’ve fallen into comfortable company. On any other occasion - with any other _person_ \- Erik’s skin would be crawling beneath the other’s gaze.

“I can’t say I know any better,” he responds. “I’ve only recently returned to town,” and before he can make another fatal blunder as he did with his name, he adds, “visiting family.”

His eyes are on his fingers, but he can hear the smile in Charles’ voice. “I as well, my friend. I arrived the day before yesterday. My sister and her husband live in the district, but as of now I’m staying in one of the boarding houses. I’ve found the people there agreeable enough - very kind in many cases and willing to help me find my way around.”

The man seems fit to continue rambling; it’s only Erik pressing down on the first keys that has him going quiet. And the song that jumps forth, it’s - his mother’s lullaby.

He can’t _help it_.

For the oddest moment he worries what the other man’s reaction will be. Very few outside of his family have heard these songs, let alone _this_ , the one held most dearly in his heart. As for the worry - perhaps has some ground in the way Charles is sitting perfectly still as he listens.

He reaches what has always been his favorite part - the notes resonating from the piano take off like birds in flight, an arrow of sound that slices through the air in the room. Everything else melts away, so many memories right on its heels, rushing forth to drown him again but this time all at once.

His face felt warm before, but now there’s what feels to be unshed tears pricking just behind his eyelids, hot and unwanted. Because - yes, his eyes have slid shut as he keeps the emotions at bay.

 _What is it like_ , Erik muses, not daring to open his eyes lest he see judgement written stark across the other’s face, _to meet a man proper and witness him at his most vulnerable in one fell swoop._

But that’s just it, isn’t it? Tying the other man to a moment such as this will only make it matter more.

And he can’t - he very nearly stops playing, his movements faltering, a wrong note hit but then suddenly -

Another pair of hands picks up the slack. Beside him, Charles has taken to the keys on the opposite end, higher notes that dance between Erik’s own; the perfect contrast, like a - a puzzle-piece, notching into place.

Erik’s eyes snap open, but he doesn’t stop playing. They continue together, and isn’t it strange, that every time Erik finds himself sneaking a glance at Charles’ profile, he catches Charles doing the same of him.

Nothing should be this easy - you don’t connect with a stranger like this, even if Charles’ fingers stumble occasionally, missing a note or choosing the wrong chord to string together with Erik’s; the man isn’t as practiced as Erik, but more the same, his unsteady fingers have somehow managed to add a new layer to the lullaby Erik hadn’t thought possible. A sweetness to underly the love that chases every note, and an offplay of the ache Erik has known it to carry for so long, the loneliness it that follows through.

He hates himself in that moment. Hates himself with a finality that would fell entire worlds as sure as it has his own, because Erik cannot presume anything else but intent.

Charles is telling Erik that he isn’t alone. Either that, or Erik is reading the other’s actions, his companion notes, all wrong. And he hates himself even more for hoping that he’s _right_.

When the song inevitably comes to an end, Charles’ chest is heaving. He tilts a wide grin at Erik. The lighting in the shop doesn't do his fair features justice; if it were possible - but, no - he couldn’t hope of ever seeing the tousle of Charles’ brown hair beneath warm sunlight. It isn’t possible, but he _wants_ it.

What his hair would look like, spread out across a pillow...

Erik shoves to his feet, and he feels it, when his expression shutters off. He hadn’t realized how open he’d let it become, lost as he was in the moment; there’s a heavy ball of dread sinking quick to the bottom of his stomach when Charles does the same, the smile dropped clear off his boyish face.

“Erik, are you alright?”

“No, I -” he sounds like a cornered animal, and he hates that more, desperately forcing it into something else. Anger, standoffishness - he settles somehow on _cutting_. “We’re done here,” he grits out past his clenched jaw, swiping his things from where they’d been moved to the floor.

Stupid, _stupid_ -

Charles does a piss poor job of hiding the hurt in his voice. “Is something -”

“I’m going now,” Erik responds crisply.

 _Wrong_ , the other meant to finish. _Is there something wrong, Erik?_

Erik keeps his gaze glued to a faraway shelf, but Charles’ rumpled hair seems to catch him at every corner, always in his peripheral. Then the worst of all - he wants to take back the _thought_ of it, the second it bubbles to the surface - a monotone, “Thank you for your time.”

A dismissal, like Charles is some two-bit _whore_ -

Instead of being affronted like he should, Charles chooses to sound confused, of all things. The man makes a soft noise in his throat, like he means to speak again but decides against it. And - don’t look, _don’t_ \- it’s with a practiced maneuver that Erik sweeps his arms into his coat and shoves it up over his shoulders, but as he tilts his hat onto his head, the brim tips up to reveal those same blue eyes, trained on Erik’s face like there’s nowhere else they’d rather be, like Erik is an enigma the other is trying to figure out.

Good. That’s the way it should be, the way it has _always_ been. Erik was careful, always, never letting anyone get too close, but all it took was a single lapse in judgement and _now_ -

He’ll be Max Eisenhardt - cool smiles, detached and ever brisk - if that’s what it takes to push people away.

“Wait!” Charles calls to Erik’s retreating back.

But - there isn’t enough _time_.

 _Two more days_ , Erik tells himself, finding it odd that it sounds more like a plead every step closer he gets to achieving his end. _Two more days and you’ll have it - revenge. Shaw._

But for the first time, he finds himself considering just what it is he’ll be missing.

*

Erik isn’t proud to admit it, but those two days are spent hermited away in the apartment. In between pacing around the small space of the room and going over his knives, there’s very little else to do but think.

Thinking, of course, leads to consideration, to _doubt_.

He leaves the apartment once, out to the pub sequestered in a cluster of buildings just down the street - even by district standards, the area is not a good one; but it helps, somewhat, to wander inside with no goal in sight and down three or four beers within an hour’s time. It helps him breathe, for lack of a better word. Or gives him the space to do so, where in his head everything’s gone wonky and jumbled.

There’s the ever-present shadow of Shaw occupying his thoughts, Logan, his parents, and now the funny little man he hasn’t known for as much as a week. Funny and overtly _kind_ \- in an eager, incorrigible sort of way. Kind and, damn him, the unnatural red color of Charles’ lips had been hard to keep his eyes off of for long.

Erik signals the bartender for another beer. Behind him, a small group of boys who couldn’t be older than eighteen are throwing darts, giggling in a way that suggests they’ve wheedled alcohol out of someone over the drinking age.

At that same time only days before, he’d just driven a knife through Victor Creed’s chest. Thinking back on it hasn’t given him any relief; Shaw knows about Erik, according to Creed, which has only driven him further up the wall with impatience to get this _done_. Go through with his plan to take out Shaw.

After a while of that, with his mind buzzing so sweetly, Erik finds he can no longer assess the logistics of his mission and its standing, an idle litany of _CharlesCharlesCharles_ shoving to the forefront of any such thought.

Charles, he surmises, would hate this place. _Erik_ hates this place. He hates the grime on the countertops and the dusty coaster the bartender had placed beneath his glass. He hates the noise - some grainy, damaged record playing in the back. And most of all... he hates the beer.

Beneath the terrible lighting, the color of it is disturbingly close to what he imagines Charles’ hair to be in the sunlight.

Not too long after that, Erik vomits. But this time, at least, he makes it outside.

It also means he feels like shit when he has to get up in the morning.

By Logan’s request, of course, the hour is once again ungodly. Erik nearly nods off in the shower.

He’s coherent enough that by the time he’s walking the dark streets on his way into the square, he’s worked up a heavy weight of guilt for the way he left Charles at the shop. If Erik is lucky - if _Charles_ is lucky - they’ll never see each other again.

The universe obviously thinks otherwise, because the second Erik rounds the corner boutique he catches sight of a frighteningly familiar figure.

“Erik!” Charles says when he notices Erik’s approach. He’s happy to see Erik it would seem, though he continues tentatively, “I hadn’t expected to see you again - so soon.”

The man is sitting on the stoop of a bakery that hasn’t yet opened for the day, though the little lights hanging from a barren trellis above the windows offers enough light to see him by. At his side, a young girl has tucked herself close enough to loop her arm around his, the gleam in her pale eyes conspiratol.

“You know Mr. Charles?” she chirps before Erik can so much as open his mouth.

“Yes,” Erik pronounces slowly. He stops a few feet away from the bottom step, his hands finding their way into his coat pockets.

“I’m Jean,” she supplies. “Charles and I are friends. He doesn’t remember me, but I remember him!”

Charles only shakes his head, a bemused smile softening his expression. “Oh, Jean.” Then, to Erik, the smile faltering a bit, “She seems convinced we’ve met before.”

Then he laughs, choking it off after a short moment, perhaps remembering the way he and Erik last parted; Erik on the other hand has yet to get it off his mind.

Their eyes meet and settle there, though neither moves to speak. The mismatched lightbulbs hanging down from the trellis make an odd play about Charles’ eyes; the different colors. Erik is entranced by it.

Both of them startle when the child coughs, pointed. Then she produces an unexpectedly sly grin, glancing from Charles to Erik and back again. “ _Oh_ , I know why you don’t remember me, Mr. Charles.” She nods sagely. “It’s okay. I understand now.”

Strange child, Erik thinks. He doesn’t let it unnerve him though, choosing instead to send Charles a tentative, close-mouthed smile of his own. “I’m glad I ran into you again,” he admits. It’s a bit gratifying to see the way Charles relaxes at the words. “I keep thinking about the other day, and I wanted to apologize, given the chance.”

The other moves to refix his scarf, tucking it further beneath the collar of his coat - Erik can’t help but speculate that the old thing is probably hiding another one of the ragged sweaters Charles is so keen on. “Apology accepted, my friend.”

When Charles smooths his hand down his front and looks up, there’s a curious flush high on his cheeks.

Erik dithers. Come on, just _do it_. “Would you - that is, if you aren’t busy, would you care to,” good gods, the things he _wouldn’t_ do, “join me for a cup of coffee?”

Shit. What is he doing? That isn’t -

“I’d love to,” Charles replies quickly, breathless. Beside him, Jean covers a giggle with her hand. Charles responds with a firm nudge her way. “I was just sitting with Jean while she waits for her brother, but he should be here any minute now.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be _fine_ , Mr. Charles.”

He sends her a small frown, but he pushes to his feet. “If you’re sure.”

Erik turns toward where the cafe sits a few shops down, and when he starts walking, Charles falls into step at his side.

“I’d hate to impose on any more of your time,” Charles says after a beat. He’s hunched down in his coat against the chill wind and has to lean forward to look over at Erik.

For his part, Erik only lifts a sharp eyebrow. His hand settles on the handle of the cafe door and the tinkle of the bell follows them inside. “If you recall, I didn’t make that great of an impression the first time we met. Want to try this again?”

“Just a minute!” comes Logan’s yell from somewhere out of sight.

Charles chuffs a laugh and moves for the closest stool at the counter. “You’re having me on.”

“No,” Erik replies easily. He smirks. “I do find your company... enjoyable.” His stomach gives a flutter at the sight of the blush crawling up the other man’s neck.

He takes the seat to Charles’ left and nods his head at the order board. “What’ll you be having?”

The other hums. “House special, probably. I’m told Marie makes it herself, and I trust her more than that concoction Logan tried to sell me.”

Erik is just about to agree - Logan’s coffee is indeed _nefarious_ \- when the man himself walks into the room.

Logan guffaws, throwing a mock-fist over his heart. “You wound me, Chuck.”

The large man saunters behind the counter and drops a stack of cardboard boxes by the register. His eyebrows have raised considerably by the time he looks up at Erik and Charles, and Erik can hardly imagine what he’s thinking.

A hard glare manages to quell whatever Logan may have to say on the matter though, and he instead moves to pilfer a cigar from his trouser pocket, sticking it, unit, in his mouth. “I gotta grab another load from storage, but when I get back, I’ll take you up top.” He directs this to Erik. “Got that, Eisenhardt?”

Erik’s eyes narrow, but he nods. So Logan only gets it right when it counts, it would seem.

Without waiting for a response, Logan flips Erik a salute and makes for the door he walked in through.

“Sorry,” Erik says into the ensuing silence. “I have to speak with Logan a moment, but it won’t take long.”

Charles, for his part, doesn’t hide his confusion, but he does tilt another small smile Erik’s way. “Quite alright. They only just opened, so I expect Marie will be down soon to work the register. She’ll keep me company in your stead.”

Logan returns not a minute later and drops another stack of boxes behind the counter. He jerks his head toward a different door, the one that leads up into the apartment above. “This’ll only take a sec.”

Reluctantly, Erik rises from his seat and casts a quick glance down at Charles; the other has taken to fiddling with a salt shaker, drumming the fingers of his other hand in time with the orchestral music coming from the cafe radio. He’s thankful when Marie brushes past them on their way into the stairwell and heads straight for Charles; more the chance that Charles won’t feel the need to disappear while Erik is gone.

“I don’t know much about the kid,” Logan says the second the door into the cafe space is shut behind them, “but whatever you’re doing - be careful, bub.”

Erik’s fingers twitch at his side. White-hot fury burns in his veins and has his lips tugging back in a faint snarl. “Mind your own damn business, Howlett.”

The man merely shrugs, lifting his hands up, palms out. “Hey, wow, sure,” Logan grouses. One hand pulls into a fist, and he gestures with a thumb up to the second landing. “Right this way.”

The door at the top of the first set of steps is a marred rust color, the paint in desperate need of a new layer, but the room it opens into is more... lived in than Erik has come to expect. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s started to assume everyone lives like he does - always on the move, squatting for the night or two in the nondescript bolt-holes of less than savory neighborhoods.

But in this apartment, he is greeted with the sight of a narrow kitchen - a table squeezed between the oven and the sink, every chair mismatched with the others and the cloth draped over it a faded pattern of sunflowers - and beyond that is a living room just big enough to hold an couch and a lowtable with a radio on it. There are so many... _things_ in the apartment, lying on every surface and it many cases thrown about.

The kitchen is neater, by far; pushing into the next room has Erik feeling claustrophobic. Hampers full of clothing, an innumerable amount of boxes holding gods know what; plants growing in makeshift containers - food packages and in one case a coffee dispenser, sitting there beside the gramophone that occupies one corner, the mechine itself half-sunk into the cardboard box beneath it where weight has caved the flimsy material inward.

Logan comes up behind Erik and claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t touch anything, got it?”

“I didn’t plan to,” Erik remarks with a grimace.

“Good man. Marie is... particular.” A chuckle. “It’d be your head, bub, not mine.”

“And the plants?” Logan doesn’t seem the type of man to care for any living thing but himself, nor would he have the inclination to. But then again, he somehow ended up raising a child in a garish landmine of laundry and one too many potted flowers.

Logan snorts and waves him down another hall. “No idea where they came from. Suddenly they were just _there_. Kids’re a strange bunch, yeah? But according to her she got ‘em from a friend.” The man’s back flexes beneath his shirt, stretching the material as he shrugs. “Who am I to argue?”

They come to a stop at the end of the hall; at Logan’s push, the door swings inward and reveals a room even smaller than Erik’s apartment. It’s spartan, in any context - no windows and a bed shoved to the far wall. The only other notable piece of furniture is a desk sat, rather oddly, in the center of the room.

Multiple lines of scratches in the hardwood lead to its legs, suggesting Logan dragged it in, and recently.

“Well,” Logan says around his cigar, “There it is. Jakob’s old writing desk, just like you ordered.”

For a second, Erik wants to ask if he’s joking. The desk... his _father’s_ desk, it isn’t much of anything at all. Erik takes the few steps necessary to reach it, drops a hand to the dark, glossy wood, fingers running over the nubs and indents in the surface where one pen or another pressed too hard through layers of paper. The top of the piece is narrow, just another wood to provide for a single drawer; Erik slips his fingers through the handle and draws it out.

Nothing. The drawer is empty.

“Logan,” Erik keeps his tone carefully lowered, vowels hissing against the back of his teeth. His hand tightens round the edge of the drawer hard enough to make it creak. “Care to explain?”

“Already did, bub. I told you I had it, got it in from storage just an hour ago. The thing you wanted?” And he can _hear_ the man raise his unruly eyebrows, though he doesn’t give him the decency of turning around to see it proper. “You’re looking at it.”

“I can see that,” Erik snaps. “Or can’t, actually, because there’s _nothing to see_.”

Logan gives a loud snort. There’s the _snick_ of a lighter, followed by the ashy smell of the cigar catching. “I’da thought you smarter than that, Lehnsherr. Can’t leave important docs out for just about any ol’ hench to get their mits on, not in plain sight.”

That - _damn him_ , Erik is reconsidering the man’s intelligence after all. “False bottom?”

“You bet your ass.”

This time, Erik can’t help but roll his eyes. _Insipid_. “I’d hate to lose that bet,” he remarks dryly, already moving to curl the fingers of one hand underneath the drawer, the ones of his other fitting deftly along the inner edges as he searches for - _there_.

The bottom is displaced with a faint pop, and it has dust scattering, sliding off the slate of wood and unto the stack of papers underneath. They’re all blue - drafting paper, _schematics_ \- and covered in white pencil markings, the cramped cursive Erik instantly recognizes as his father’s.

“What is...,” he pulls the forth from the drawer, crouching to set the stack on his knees and proceeds to leaf through them, eyes skimming down the pages. There are drawings, plans - something that has to do with _S. Shaw, capitol, hours of sunlight;_ the words repeated most often in the blurbs that surround the designs. “Logan?”

“Jakob wasn’t very forthcoming with the details at the time, but the designs you’re looking at - those’re the blueprints for the clocktower at the capitol. Whatever it is Shaw had over him, it had to do with building it. Shaw enlisted him and Armando both, though that’s probably a little too kind a word for it - demanded, coerced, pick your poison.”

The last page unfolds into a circular outline of the clockface, and he sees it now, stunned by the fact that he never noticed before in the pictures he’s seen of it, his father present in the metalwork, the pattern of the frame, but there’s also something odd about the design, something _not right_ -

“Your father was a clockmaker, Lehnsherr. But it don’t take a genius to figure it out. You tell me - what’s a clock got to do if it ain’t got nothin’ behind it?”

It’s clear as day in the drawings - no gears, no roughs for the mechanisms of it. But _how_? If this is true, and there is nothing to suggest the clocktower should be operating - the tower should be hollow, _empty_.

This changes everything. Erik’s initial plan of action had been at the capitol building itself, but now, he has another variable to contest with - this must be it, what Shaw is able to do, to get _away_ with, it has to do with whatever Shaw is hiding in that clocktower; there _is_ something there.

Erik makes short work of folding the blueprints and neatly hiding them away in the inside pocket of his coat. He stand then, turns to leave. He’s done here, there’s nothing else he needs, but suddenly Logan is there, blocking the doorway.

“I know what you’ve been doing,” he says, matter of fact, as he chews on his cigar. “I know it ain’t pretty.”

Eyes narrowing, Erik lets his gaze flicker from the other man’s face down to his beefy arms, now crossed promptly over an unnaturally broad chest. “I didn’t exactly lie about my activities,” he replies hotly. “Creed was the last on my list. He said,” that is was all my fault, “that Shaw knows what I’m up to. He knows it’s me.”

Logan nods as if what Erik is saying is somehow acceptable. The usual smarmy grins and smirks have left the man, and his face looks aged for the first time since Erik began contact with him - haggard, drained. Logan’s upper lip twitches in one corner and he looks grim when he says, “You’re running short of time there, aren’t ye? I had one of Shaw’s guys in here just this time yesterday - didn’t tell him nothing, but he sure was sniffin’ round for something.”

Shaw, of course, was bound to catch up with him - it was only a matter of how soon. In that way, this isn’t news. Logan, for his part though, still has something to say, and Erik’s finding it hard to summon the patience to let the man get to it.

“I know what killing that monster will do for these people, hell, what it’ll do for everyone in the territories. The thing I’m against is the way you wanna go about it.”

“Yes,” Erik agrees coolly. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

That only serves to rile Logan. “What’s it gotta take to make you listen for one damn -”

“It’s the _only_ way. Not that I’d expect you to understand.”

“Don’t I?” Logan fires back. The veins along his temples have become more pronounced, though he has yet to raise his voice. “You think there’s nothing left for you. That’s what you think.”

Erik’s breath hisses past his clenched teeth. Breathe, just _breathe_. “Logan,” he warns.

“You think there’s no one waiting for you on the other side of this. Now, are you so sure about that?”

It’s not something Erik has wanted to think about in some time. The colonies, he always felt, reflecting on the years gone past as he lay awake on his mattress, damaged him. It’s everything he knew he could never have, and what he lost. It’s - Charles, meeting him once, then again is the music shop, playing the lullaby and - connecting, on some level Erik didn’t think possible of himself. If he’s being honest, that alone is terrifying. But, to answer Logan’s questions - is he sure?

Ask him three days ago, he might’ve said yes, quick and to the point.

Now though, if there’s a chance of something, a glimmer of something fluttery and _possible_ \- but no, there _can’t_ -

“Get of the way,” Erik barks, eyes flashing, dark. “I don’t need a lecture, not from you.”

And Logan does, surprisely. His arms remain crossed, but he only watches Erik with an unreadable expression. The moment dissipates after a touch, and Logan throws out a hand back into the hallway. “After you.”

The conversation is over, then. Neither sees fit to speak again, not until, at least, they’ve made it out of the apartment and down the stairwell into the cafe, Erik’s focus somewhere inward; the press of the papers against his breast, thick and like a weight on his heart.

Marie and Charles look up at their arrival. Their heads had been tucked close over a table by the window, giggling over mugs of coffee in what might be construed as a private affair; only the sight of the dual smiles crossing their faces - at Erik and Logan, believe it or not - has Erik abandoning the idea entire.

“Hullo,” Charles greets, his eyes alight with some form of mischief or another. “Might we be able to help you fine gentlemen?”

Marie titters into her hands and kicks her feet. The red boots have made another appearance, though now Erik can tell they’re much too big for the girl; her feet don’t even touch the floor beneath her chair.

“Yeah,” Logan responds, gruff, as he slides past Erik. “Marie n’ I got a day’s worth of coffee to brew, so we better get to it.” He makes for the boxes he’d set down earlier and pulls the first one aside, ripping the tape from the lid without using a knife, all bare-hands.

The girl climbs onto her knees and sits back, plants her hands firmly on the tabletop. “But we were talking about my flowers!” she calls over her shoulder, turning back to look at Charles again and give him a decisive nod. “He never wants to talk about my flowers.” 

Then her little brow furrows, and it’s perhaps a bit perplexing how much Erik finds it... adorable. “I thought you knew, like, _lots_ of plant stuff but maybe you forgot that, too?”

Charles’ face does something akin to a confused puppy. His head had been tilted slightly to one side, but now he’s tilted it the other way. “I can’t say I’ve had very much gardening experience.” Then he laughs, a small tremble to it. “I feel like there’s a joke you and Jean are both in on and I’ve been silly enough to miss it.” He shakes his head. “Oh well, another time?”

Jean jumps to her feet and scampers off further into the cafe. “Okay. See you, Mr. Charles!”

When Charles’ eyes leave her retreating form, he sighs and shakes his head again. His gaze flickers up to Erik. “Are all Genoshan children this strange?”

That startles a laugh out of Erik, low and throaty. The sound has Charles’ cheeks flushing a pretty red. Not that Erik - notices.

“I’ve had about enough of this place,” he replies. “Care to go for a walk?”

Charles hides his responding grin in his mug - it’s empty, anyway, Erik saw as much, which only serves to make it more gratifying.

“Ah, yes, of course. But weren’t you also going to get a cup?”

“Hmm?”

“Coffee?” Charles lifts his mug and jiggles it.

Erik groans. “Let’s forget the coffee.” He grabs Charles lightly around the elbow when the man finally sees fit to stand. “Walk with me.”

After they manage to make it out of the square, Erik lets Charles take the reins, though that means they wind up ambling around with no particular direction or destination in mind. It’s only after they’d looped around the neighborhoods that circle the surrounding area that Erik realizes the time - almost two hours have gone past as they meandered, commenting now and again on the children playing games in the street, kicking balls between the circles of light the streetlamps provide, and the women stringing laundry between apartment windows; at one point he and Charles had made a game of it, guessing their names, their hobbies, what they were thinking.

The last ten or so minutes they hadn’t spoken at all, perfectly fine with walking side by side. They pass under a tunnel, glancing up in time to see the carriage that passes overhead; a grey mare whinnies over the noise of its hooves clopping on the cobblestone.

When they emerge on the other side, they stop at the corner.

“I forgot to ask,” Erik begins, effectively breaking their companionable silence, “Why _were_ you in the music shop? The other day, when we played together?”

Charles’ attention catches somewhere in the distance. The late afternoon has brought more people out into the streets - though as ever in winter, the night is at its darkest, and they can just make out the undefined shapes of men unloading crates out of a car and carrying them into a nearby grocer’s.

The other doesn’t seem to have heard, at first, but then a barely-there frown pulls at his mouth, the soft lines of his skin, as he deliberates his answer. Patiently, Erik watches the side of his face and the shine of the lamplight in those blue eyes.

“It might sound odd, but -” Charles licks his chapped lips. It’s maddening, the blistering color of them, “would you believe me if I said I felt drawn there?”

“No, no,” Erik says slowly. “I know what you mean.”

The smile it earns him is gentle, something so small, so quieted, that has the opposite effect of sending a bolt through Erik’s chest, all the way down to his gut.

 _Would you believe me_ , Erik thinks wildly, _if I said I’ve never wanted anyone more than I want you now?_

Because that’s just it - in a moment’s time, Erik could nearly lose everything. Visions of revenge, imminent plans for Shaw, the blueprints still tucked safely inside his coat - it all flies away and leaves Erik bereft, a need he scant recalls feeling so profoundly as he does now, a livewire sparking at his fingertips, the need - _want_ , heady and debilitating - to reach out and _touch_...

 _You think there’s no one waiting for you_ , Logan had said.

But would it be so bad, if there was someone, and if that person - _Charles_ -

Erik blinks away his daze and finds Charles in front of him, close enough that his nose is brushing Erik’s cheekbone. Charles’ breathing has gone scratchy; white puffs that dissipate into the air around his face, framing it there against the dark.

“Charles...,” his voice is shot - hoarse.

“I know it was presumptive,” the other says quietly. There’s so much to look at all at once, to choose to look at; Charles’ great big eyes, nary a hairsbreadth from his own; lips, imperfect nose, and now the sharp crook of one eyebrow, the movement making Erik’s eyes almost cross to catch. “I know, but,” and Charles chuckles, low and a touch giddy, as he finally takes notice, “but the boarding house where I’m staying, my room, it’s just down the street there.” Erik feels more than sees Charles wave a hand in its direction. “So: I wonder, would it be presumptive of me to ask if you would like to come upstairs? With me. Come upstairs with me.”

“Charles, I -” can’t, won’t, _shouldn’t_ -

“Is that a yes?” The other pulls back, drops his eyes to his hands where they’ve taken to fiddling with the buttons of Erik’s coat, circling with a knuckle, clockwise and then counter.

“I...,” Erik swallows. He blinks hard, but there’s nothing to dispel, no daze, just - the want that’s been curling decidedly in his stomach, aflutter once again. Nerves, excitement, he doesn’t know. “Yes. Charles.”

Charles takes another step away. He glances somewhere toward the end of the street before settling back on Erik. He laughs again, higher this time, when he sees something on Erik’s face he apparently likes seeing. “Come on then, I think I’m starting to freeze.”

Erik has to remind himself to walk, not run, when they start moving. Charles’ hand is warm in his own, and he lets the other pull him along as they skirt the sidewalk and the people puttering about their business; there’s a discouraging amount of them to bypass.

The boarding house looks to be one of the older buildings in the district. All the window shutters are fake, nailed shut, and the wood of the fixtures is mottled dark brown as if soaked through with rainwater, though it hasn’t rained in over two weeks. Outside the front overhang, Erik is surprised to see the same boy from a few days ago, the one he had passed on his first visit to the cafe.

Of course, before they can so much as get through the door, Charles spots the child and has to smile at him - honestly, the man would strike up a conversation with the kid if Erik wasn’t proving to be a worthy obstacle. Charles sidesteps him easily, flicking his fingers in a wave and beaming. He squeezes Erik’s hand as he does, and that should be the end of it, they’re moving through the door, but then -

The boy tilts his head up, and there, deeply sad, very young eyes shine in the lights of the building. “You’re -” the boy chokes, releases a steadying breath, “Please, where did all the fireflies go?”

Charles stops halfway through the door, and it tugs Erik back from where he’d gotten ahead. “Pardon?” He sounds genuinely perplexed, verging on upset.

“Charles, it’s not our problem. I’m sure his mother is somewhere around here.”

He twists out of Erik’s grip. “Erik,” he says sharply.

That next second, the woman Erik remembers as the boy’s mother pushes past them through the doorway. She goes immediately to the boy, pulling him into her front, and procures a handkerchief from her coat. The boy’s eyes aren’t so teary now, not after she wipes his face and has him blow his nose.

“Ssh,” she hushes. Then to Erik and Charles, “I’m so sorry, he’s been like this for days.” She pats her child on the back, rubbing and soothing in a circular motion. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it handled.”

“If you’re sure,” Charles tells her.

The woman waves them off, and finally, Charles allows Erik to pull him inside.

“That was... strange,” Erik says at length. They’ve wandered toward the back of the lobby, toward the stairs that should lead them up to Charles’ room.

Charles doesn’t look so upset now, but there’s an odd quality to his face, drawn, like he’d just seen a ghost.

“Jean and Marie and now this. I am definitely missing something.” His eyebrows furrow, though he appears to shrug it off the next second, looking back to Erik - for guidance, or maybe something else. “Let’s just go.”

The hallways are more cramped than what should be liveable, though it makes sense - less hall space means more rooms. The rent, he knows, is probably horridly low given the conditions, but in the district, where getting an apartment or permanent home can be difficult, the cost of staying in a place like this can add up.

Afternoon, at least, means hardly anyone is still in their rooms. It’s pleasantly quiet and the only sound is their footsteps on the ill-kempt floorpaneling. Charles’ door is halfway down the hall, and it opens to reveal a nondescript room; a wide bed and the shuttered window behind it, what looks to be Charles’ things - a duffle of clothes on the bedside table. The bed is unmade, but the comforter has been dragged up in some semblance of order, though very obviously wrinkled, and the drapes are brown, a shade that matches the comforter and pillow cases. The rest of the room is devoid of color.

“My humble abode,” Charles jokes, too light to be anything but nervous, or maybe - upset, still, by what happened downstairs with the boy.

“It’s perfect,” Erik replies. He steps toward the bed, turning on his heel to look back at Charles and shrugging off his coat in the same motion. HThe coat he folds neatly - careful of the blueprints - and sets aside with his trilby, his shoes. Charles follows suit, finishing before Erik does and taking a seat on the end of the bed.

“I...” Charles’ hands clench around his knees. They hadn’t turned the light on when they entered the room, so it’s dim - the only glow from the street a floor below that seeps through the cracks in the shutters. Charles tilts his face up, and even across the space that separates them, there’s just enough contrast to see the other’s blown pupils, the thin sliver of blue that rings them.

It could just be the dark, Charles’ eyes adjusting - he can’t possibly feel this, whatever it is Erik has been feeling, too. Overwhelming in the way they’ve jumped so quickly from point A to point B, hell, they’ve gone straight to point D - it’s too fast, but at the same time not fast _enough_. The things Erik feels around Charles, the certainty and an oddly comforting sense of safety, a _rightness_ he hasn’t felt since... a long time ago now. Happier years that are better left forgotten.

Erik brushes those thoughts away. He’s here now, and he wants what he does. He can’t allow the moment to skip out of reach.

Gentle as he can, he approaches the bed and lifts one of his calloused, work-roughened hands to rest on Charles’ cheek. He’s embarrassed by it, knows it isn’t exactly a - desirable thing for one to be touched by. But the other’s gaze merely flickers up to him, raising his own hand to cover Erik’s on his cheek and press in on it. Then he reaches out for Erik; silent, save the rustle of the comforter, Charles scoots back on the bed. His grip on Erik’s arm moves up to Erik’s neck, and Erik can do nothing but follow, crawling up over the smaller man.

“I...,” Charles starts again, this time in a whisper. “I want you, Erik. I feel, here,” and he releases Erik’s hand to tap against the place on his chest directly above his heart - still clothed, but not for long, if Erik can help it, “something - something good. I like it, and so I know - I _want_ you.”

The emphasis on the word is strange, like Charles can hardly believe it himself. It reminds Erik that he doesn’t know very much about this man, just as little as Charles knows of him in turn. Maybe he was too quick to judge - there is so much more to Charles, so much more he cannot wait to peel back and flesh out piece by piece if Charles will let him.

Maybe, like Erik, he never thought he could ever want something again. Maybe he’s never known want to begin with; a long shot, but for a guess... nothing could ever quite measure up to this, and that fact, at least to Erik, is not so comforting as it is terrifying.

But Erik doesn’t let go of it, not for a second. Charles’ shoulders roll down, his back arching up in an attempt to shove further up the bed, and it’s there that Erik meets him halfway, braced on his forearms as he brings their mouths together. The hand at his neck becomes an arm, the crook of Charles’ elbow flush against the nape of his hair, and gods, Charles’ _mouth_ -

Wet heat, the swirl of his tongue around Erik’s. Erik chases the taste of him, traces the ridges in the roof of the other’s mouth.

“Mmm,” Charles manages, when they part for air, both of their chests heaving. “I think I - the duffle,” his hands move to run back through Erik’s hair, the smile he’s now wearing the only light Erik needs in the room to see by, dopey and full of - want, not - never _that_ , but, “I have something we can use in the duffle, for -”

Erik cuts him off by kissing him again, this time open mouthed, starting at Charles’ lips then dragging down to the ball of his throat, mouthing and sucking with all Erik can give. Charles can only moan, long, _ruined_ , in response.

“Let me?” he asks when he finally pulls back. Charles continues to run his fingers through his hair, and he finds he likes it - the petting. He hardly knows what he’s asking himself.

“Y-yes,” Charles chokes out. His body is trembling beneath Erik’s, and Erik let’s his gaze run over it, stopping at their only point of contact, his stomach pressed against Charles’, and beyond that, their legs tangling together. “Please, Erik, I want -”

“Ssh,” Erik hushes. He rises up to knees and nudges Charles’ hip. “Get your clothes off, I got it.”

It’s a stretch to snatch the duffle, but he manages to pull it onto the bed. Meanwhile, Charles doesn’t try to get out from under him to undress, instead struggling out of his clothes without sitting up, shirt and then pants, underwear - and then suddenly, he’s naked, soft in places around his belly and hips, his sternum, the sharp notches of his collarbone, pale and altogether _lovely_.

“What am I looking for?” Erik croaks, short of breath. “Charles -”

Charles hands reach for Erik’s hair again, and he finds it immensely distracting.

“Pocket,” the other man answers simply. “Left-side pocket. There’s a bottle of lotion.”

He’s surprised there isn’t more fanfare when his hand finally closes around the bottle. He tugs it free and drops it on the bed beside Charles’ shoulder, already pulling his shirt off over his head. Charles, on the other hand, is working at Erik’s belt and the button of his pants; the sound of the zipper, oddly loud against the quiet and their excited breathing, and finally - skin against skin.

“ _Gods_ ,” Erik moans. The pockets of space between the places where their bodies slot together grow unbearably hot; they move together, against eachother, for a few more minutes that seem to drag on for much longer, not stopping before Erik has his tongue firmly shoved inside Charles’ mouth again, and they’re able to breathe past the bright-hot pleasure that sparks behind their eyes when their cocks slide together.

“Erik!” Charles cries out, his voice gone high and reedy, _needy_ , “Please, just -”

He squirms. Erik instantly goes for the bottle, uncapping it and squirting a dollop onto his fingers. “Have you ever done this before?” he asks gently as he moves away, a little ways down the bed to settle between Charles’ legs. The smaller man parts them gladly, a softer expression taking over his features.

“No,” he admits, and a faint blush creeps up his neck and cheeks. “There was never the time, but I’ve never wanted...”

“It’s alright,” Erik hushes him again. “It’s alright, I’ve got you now. I’ll -” and he breathes out in a rush, something hard and unforgiving dislodging from his heart. something that had been hurting him there, stuck in place, for some time. “I’ll take care of you.”

Erik has only done this four or so times; in the colonies, the amount of people seeking to pass the time with their bodies made it impossible to go a single day without a proposition, and though the encounters were trivial, impersonal to almost the point of disgust, it had been just that - a way to pass the time. Erik never wanted any of them beyond what they provided for a ten minute trip to the backrooms of the pub or a bathroom stall, and in one less memorable case, a blowjob he received behind the foreman’s trailer outside one of the mining camps.

He never wanted the person, never wanted their mind, everything in their _being_ , not like this.

“Hush now, _schatz_ ,” Erik soothes, the knuckles of his other hand trailing down the inside of Charles’ thigh. “Relax for me.”

Erik has lost the ability to think himself into the circles he’s so used to; it’s only this now, the breathy noises Charles makes, imperceptible if it weren’t for the absolute silence in the room and the hall outside, the way he chokes on one of them when Erik’s finger circles around the base of his cock, the cold touch of the lotion dribbling down his perineum, and _there_ \- finally entering Charles’ hole.

Charles inhales sharply. His spine goes rigid, Erik can feel as much beneath the hand he still has massaging at Charles’ hip. He keeps his finger in place until the other does as told - relaxing, shoulders dropping heavily to the comforter - and Erik pushes in incrementally.

It takes a while to work Charles up to two fingers, then a third. His breathing has grown labored again, more needy, and he can’t help but arch his back; fine by Erik, given he can’t help it either, the way his eyes track the line of Charles’ throat as it stretches taut, the rise and fall of Charles’ stomach in quick succession.

His fingers make a muted _schlurp_ when he retrieves them. Erik hooks his hand under one of Charles’ legs, hauling it up and dragging the other closer.

“Okay?” he asks quietly. He makes sure to meet Charles eyes, and when he does, he’s struck by the sincerity there - acquiescence, willing and wanting, but also _trust_. “I’m clean, so you know. There’s hasn’t been anyone in...”

Charles nods, curls the toes of one foot where they’ve pressed up against Erik’s shoulder. “Me too. Go slow.”

Lining up is simple enough. It’s drawing in close - closer, physically, then Erik has been to another in years - that nearly ruins him. It’s the physicality, yes, and that slip of a moment where Erik looks down at Charles and Charles back up at him; that moment where he can focus in on the faint pulse of Charles’ thighs with the man’s erratic heartbeat, held tight around Erik’s waist; that moment where he looks down, sees Charles and his hair fanned out across one of the pillows - the other pillow tucked snug beneath the smaller man’s hips. And the moment only ends when Erik begins to push in.

This, Erik remembers. And yet the sensation of it, the tightness and encompassing heat, the starbursts of red and purple erupting in his vision, it’s all heightened, somehow. And in that way, it’s all undeniably _new_.

“Ahh,” Charles garbles softly. “Ah, _ahh_.”

Erik sinks in another inch - tight, so tight, it feels like Charles is _everywhere_ \- and he realizes with a start, just as he bottoms out, that he’s trembling harder than Charles.

“Erik,” it’s Charles, but he’s - right there with him, hands in his hair, bent in half with Erik half-collapsed on top of him. “Erik,” desperate, wrecked, “Darling, you to need to _move_.”

Pulling out is almost agonizing, but then, just as slow, he’s shifting, pushing back in again. Not a full thrust, quite yet, but it’s enough to drive Charles wild beneath him.

“Faster,” he begs. His heels are digging into the small of Erik’s back, and it’s gratifying to feel the way they curl and twitch on his next thrust. Even better - the noise of absolute shock, the startled _moan_ Charles lets out when Erik grabs Charles’ hardening cock and begins pumping it in time with his thrusts.

The moans only grow louder as they race toward completion. There’s no telling where one of them starts and the other ends, they’ve tangled so completely. Charles surges up to kiss Erik sloppily, and Erik senses the change a second or two before the other comes, Charles’ lips go slack and his eyes squeeze shut. Erik holds him through it, stilling his thrusts long enough to bring their foreheads together; sweat and stringy hair and the warm spit left behind from their kisses the only things between them.

After a shaky nod from Charles, Erik starts again. Shallow, juttery movements that send him over the edge in short manner. Finishing, he lets his arms give out. Charles catches him, ahead of him in that regard, and simply lays there petting at Erik’s flanks until he comes down from the afterglow.

“Charles,” is all Erik can manage, voice too thick for anything else. He doesn’t have anymore strength to move, aside from the short lift it takes to have his softening cock fall from Charles’ hole. When he collapses again, he’s sure to fall only half on top of the man, this time.

Charles hums, and his smile can be felt where he’s pressed it into the skin under Erik’s jaw. He kisses the spot after a pause before dropping his head back onto the pillow.

It’s well-insulated in the room. Rather obvious, neither wishes to move to get under the covers. So they lay there, still tangled and... begin to drift off.

“Erik,” the other slurs. “Please.”

“Hmm?” Erik rolls, adjusting so as to press up against Charles’ back, an arm thrown over the other’s stomach. “Okay.”

“I mean stay, Erik.” Charles sounds slightly amused, but also sleepy - and why is he even still talking? “Stay here with me.”

The nod he gives is sharp enough that Charles should feel it, though it’s served into the curls at the back of his neck. This, the thing he wanted - he can hardly recall why he wouldn’t let himself have it from the beginning. No, things are going black around the edges, fading out of place, out of reach and mind. It’ll have to wait, whatever it is. The bubble of worry, the frustration - later. He’ll remember what it means later.

Now, though, they curl together warm and safe, tucked away in that room where those thoughts cannot reach him, and at last they sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Waking up is unusual, because at first Erik is struck by the press of unfamiliar sheets much softer than his own. It takes him longer to register the body smashed against his front, the hot puffs of breath against his neck and hair, a lot of it, tickling his chin.

He bolts upright in bed.

The other person in bed with him grumbles unhappily, nuzzling into the warm spot where Erik’s head had been. It’s - _Charles_. Fuck, it’s all coming back to him. The cafe, a walk around the district, and then... his eyes flicker down to the body that has cuddled up to him in sleep. Charles’ hair is in disarray, looking unbelievably soft and tousled, and as Erik watches him, he mumbles something incomprehensible, burying his face into the nest of sheets and... snuffling.

“This was a mistake.” His voice is scratchy from disuse, grating, when the room is so quiet.

Damn it, he -

He makes the stupidest decisions when he isn’t even _drunk_.

He doesn’t intend to make a spectacle of his departure, but it would seem the very second he removes himself from the bedsheets Charles begins to stir. Erik does not realize he has an audience until he’s pulling his coat on over this morning’s clothes.

 _It can’t have been that long_ , he’s thinking as he straightens the lapels and checks his pockets; the blueprints are still there - good. _A few hours, can’t have been more than... four, gods, even five._

“Erik.” He startles visibly, freezes in place. His back is to the bed, so he can’t see Charles’ face when he - “Don’t do this again. Don’t leave me.” There’s a fine tremor to his voice - Erik hates it.

A slow, steady exhale, and he turns around.

“I’m sorry,” he responds, carefully level. His eyes are trained somewhere above the shutters, the cylindrical moldings around the frame. “Charles, I can’t -” the first spot of emotion that creeps into his voice is guilt, and it burns his throat on the way out. “I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t have the time for this - apologizing; Erik could count the number of apologies he’s handed out in his life on one hand. But the way Charles’ expression shudders, melting into something so horribly _sad_ , it’s unbearable to watch happen. So Erik glances away - and when had he even started looking again?

But Shaw... he doesn’t have _time_ for this. He let himself get distracted, and it could cost him dearly. If Shaw’s men are on his tail, he needs to act now. Distractions - _Charles_ is a distraction, and he allowed himself to -

He shakes his head, attempting to clear it. He wishes, for a desperate moment, that he could tell Charles what he plans on doing - that he could tell Charles everything. But he can’t risk it. He hates to think it, but he can’t trust Charles with this, not yet, not - not ever.

No. Because Erik doesn’t plan on surviving this, does he?

Charles will _never_ know. He won’t even get the chance.

“I have to - go.” He falters, finding it hard to step back and leave the room. “Charles, for what it’s worth...”

The swath of cream sheets and the darker comforter makes an ill-fitting contrast against Charles’ naked skin. The other man is sitting up now with his hands fisted in the blankets, and his eyes have yet to leave Erik’s face for a second.

“...for what it’s worth, this shouldn’t have happened, but I’m glad it did.” _I’m glad I met you._

His gaze skitters away before he sees Charles’ reaction, and with a quickened stride, an air of finality, horrid and painful, the way he had to do it - like cutting a length of rope if that rope were his heart - and he sweeps out of the room.

*

Erik wishes he were more surprised when he scales the fire-escape in the alleyway and makes it inside the hall to his temporary apartment; surprised, that is, to find the door left wide open and everything he’d left behind thoroughly ransacked.

He can’t know how long it’s been since they’d been here, whoever Shaw sent to track him down. The mattress is flipped on its side, the cover slashed and its stuffing scattered across the floorboards. The bureau, likewise, has been tipped over and dismembered piece by piece. Most of his clothing looks to be ripped into, though it’s hard to tell with it strewn all over the room. He does, however, feel a trickle of satisfaction at the streaks of blood on the bathroom floor - he really ought to have cleaned up that glass.

There’s no telling when it happened, so he’ll have to be quick about this. He pulls the hidden knife from his boot.

For once, paranoia has done him a sort of good. He didn’t spend the last few days twiddling his thumbs, for that matter. The night he took care of Creed he’d taken certain precautionary measures - namely, he loosened one of the floorboards by the window and pulled out the nails. It was something he should have thought of earlier, but better late then never, as he’d taken to stuffing his more important things in the insulation space beneath the freed board.

Erik walks to it now, and he crouches down by the window, jamming the tip of the knife into one of the creases. It comes free easy enough, and gods - his breath hitches on a sigh of relief. Everything is still there. His knives surely would have been taken had they been found, not that it would have mattered when he could so easily get more, but it’s the pebble, the cigarette case, both tucked safely up beneath one of the pink strips of insulation, to lose _those_...

It doesn’t beg thinking about.

The pebble, of course, an odd thing to become attached to in the last week. But retrieving the things from his hiding place has him scooping it into his palm and closing it in a fist. The pebble pulses warmly, and it reminds him instantly of Charles, wrapped around him in sleep like a limpet, and the shared heat of their skin everywhere they touched.

Erik swallows. The pebble would remind him of Charles, then. And at that thought, he tucks it safely away in one of his pockets.

As for the cigarette case, he’s gentler with it given its age. Threads of the insulation fluff have caught on the clasp, so it doesn’t pull free as quickly, but when it does he brings it up to cradle against his chest.

This. Erik’s most precious possession.

All those years in the colonies would not have been so bearable, so verily borne, if not for the case. Which is a strange thing to think, when he considers it. But it has such apparent significance to him - the grandfather it first belonged to and that he knew only as a very young child, his father who had passed it on to him, and then, well, there’s also the thing Erik keeps inside of it.

A _snick_ , the clasp unlatching. And there - a flower, petals springing back into place as if it hasn’t been pressed flat in a metal case for the last twenty years. The bright white color of it hasn’t faded over those years, nor has the vibrant shade of purple that lines the tips of the petals.

Erik isn’t stupid, and he wasn’t as a child, either. He knew enough back then to keep it well-hidden - it was obviously very valuable, a nightlock blossom that never wilts or fades - but his suspicions were confirmed not long after his parents were murdered. And it was by none other than _Shaw_.

When Shaw’s men came to pack up his parents things and, effectively, to ready Erik for the trip out to the colonies, one of them had been nosy enough to find it and open it. Thinking back, it was probably Azazel - that bastard, always so damn loyal to Shaw. Whoever it was, they handed it off to Shaw. The man acted very strange indeed when he laid eyes on the flower - not that Erik let him say anything on the matter, because at that very next moment he ran into the room and snatched the case from Shaw’s curiously slack hands.

Sebastian was very quiet for a while after that. He didn’t fire off as many veiled barbs Erik’s way, not even toward his own men as they packed off all the wares in the apartment for storage.

The man acted almost... wary toward Erik, from then on. Erik didn’t think much of it at the time, not with everything else going on around him, the stress of losing his parents and then shipping out the next day. It didn’t bear consideration until some years later, but by then there was little to do for it.

Erik kept it safe. That’s all that matters. And Shaw - Shaw will never have it. It’s strange to think he cannot remember exactly how and when it came into his possession, but it reminds him so strongly of his childhood, even the _scent_ of it - he could never handle it like anything but the most precious of treasures. He always wondered about its origins, why it never seems to die out, but the speculation would only ever prove fruitless, and he’s since left those thoughts far behind him.

He runs a finger down one of the petals, and he can’t help the upquirk of a smile at the sensation of it, cool to the touch.

Now then. The flower is tucked away again, and in it goes - into the knapsack Erik had also stuck in amongst the insulation. It would waste too much time to gather his scattered clothing, so he only grabs want he can on the way out the door.

Not too long later, Erik finds himself ducking into the same pub as the night before. This time of evening - or is it night? He hadn’t bothered to check the wristwatch, and the lack of a daylight indicator continues to throw him off-kilter - the pub has brought in a decent-sized crowd. This time though, Erik doesn’t head for the bar. There’s a more secluded area of tables toward the back, and he intends to use that bit of privacy to look at the blueprints again.

And, if Shaw’s men are closer to him than ever before, any such interruptions will cause a scene and allow him to escape largely unscathed.

He takes his seat expediently and waves off the passing waitress. There’s just enough space on the tabletop to spread out the sheets one at a time, and for a while, he lets himself be lost in his study of them.

Unbidden, his thoughts begin to drift. He feels so terribly tired, suddenly, and drained. It only leads back to thought of Charles, of what Erik had begun feeling toward him and still does feel. The faintest stirrings in his stomach, that fluttery sensation, it was - and is - the beginnings of...

But he can’t have that. Or at least, can’t allow himself to.

Of course now his concentration is thoroughly shot. His guilt over the way he left Charles, twice, weighs in, and noises of the bar become too much to handle.

He isn’t nearly as careful as he crumples the stack of blueprints in one hand and stuffs them into his knapsack. He’s done with them - he has his plan. It’s only the knowledge of who Erik will truly hurt at the end of this that has brought him to a standstill.

Charles - his kind eyes and naive smiles, the heat of him pressed close, and the recollection of the expression that had overtaken the man’s face just that morning by the bridge overpass - what feels like so long ago now. Erik hadn’t cared to consider what it meant at the time, too caught up in the surge of his lust. But it had been there all the same.

Now he knows what it meant, because he’d surely looked the very same as he bent over Charles, pressing him down into the bed, _kissing_ him, making -

Erik is in love.

Erik is in love with _Charles._

He needs to go. He’s needs to go _now_.

Find Charles, tell him - tell him everything, and find a way. Erik will find a way to survive this.

Logan’s words, _it’s a suicide mission_ , and _you think there’s no one waiting for you on the other side of this_.

But then - _now, are you so sure about that?_

It’s grown fairly late since Erik came into the pub, but he decides, then and there, that he needs to get back to the boarding house. No matter the hour - surely, Charles must still be there. He can fix this, he can -

The walk to the boarding house takes him almost twenty minutes, though that’s at the speed he takes up, almost a sprint as he dashes around carriages and through the small crowds. There are a few complaints thrown his way when he happens to brush past someone too hard, but for the most part he ignores them.

Then the squat building comes into view - it’s obvious amongst the others, not just because of the busy flock of people moving in and out the entrance at a steady pace, but the strings of circular lights that must have been placed along the brick earlier in the evening. They alternate between colors, yellow and white, and hang down between adjacent windows on the side that faces the street.

No one stops him when he heads straight for the staircase, though it’s not like anyone would care otherwise; the security in most of the district is abominable to begin with. But when Erik turns onto the second floor and reaches the door he remembers to be Charles’, he’s startled to find the door propped open, and inside - an older woman changing the sheets on the bed.

Erik’s mouth has gone slack; he recovers quickly. “Excuse me,” he starts, firm enough to get the woman’s attention. She sends him a curious glance over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised in question.  
  
He licks his lips, hesitating. “I’m looking for the man who is staying here, are you...?”

“I’m the maid,” she responds, in a slow manner that suggests she believes Erik to be particularly stupid. “This room was vacated an hour ago. If you’re looking for the young man who tenanted it, you’ve just missed him. He moved out, looked to be in an awful hurry, too.”

Erik takes a step toward her before he can stop himself. His hands clench at his sides. Where would Charles go? He did say - a sister lived in town, but why would he leave now?

“Did he happen to mention where he was going? Anything at all?”

The old woman shakes her head as she folds a set of pillowcases over her arm. “No, I don’t believe he did. If you’d excuse me, now, I have a lot of work to get to.”

She places her load in a laundry hamper, balancing it on one hip, and shoos him out the door.

Where _would_ Charles go? And so suddenly? It begs the question of whether it was because of Erik - which isn’t a thought he finds at all comforting.

Of course Charles wouldn’t leave behind any means of contact for Erik. What Erik said to him and his subsequent departure, it didn’t have to be spelled out - Erik didn’t want Charles, or at least, that’s the only plausible explanation for why Erik left as he did, and the reason for the traitorous guilt that won’t leave him be. Because, though it isn’t true in the slightest, there are very few other conclusions that Charles could have come to.

He let Erik fuck him, bared the most vulnerable parts of himself without saying hardly anything at all, and Erik... threw it back in his face and left him without explanation _again_. But this time, supposedly, it was for good.

Erik is losing time at an alarming rate. Hitting the streets again only has him heading for the music shop - Charles isn’t there, and the shop is closed to begin with, at this late an hour - and then across the district, all the way to the square, the cafe - Charles isn’t there _either_.

He should’ve asked in the beginning how they should carry out correspondence, be it by phone or designated meeting place, because even Erik wasn’t in his right mind at the time, and he surely thought about it a lot; getting to see Charles again.

 _There’s no need to panic_ , Erik chides himself. He’s standing just beyond the lights of the cafe’s awning, leaning against the railing with his shoulders hunched up against the wind that picked up in the last hour. The knapsack is digging into his lower back, and the area along his shoulderblades where the strap rests has grown sore from chafing. He feels lost, uprooted, and in desperate need of a cigarette.

“Hey you.” The surprises certainly never end. He tilts his head to the right; there, in the shadow of the railing, it’s the young girl Charles was speaking to this morning, the one who said she knew him - Jean.

“You,” Erik mimics intelligently. Then his eyes widen in realization.

Jean is faster. She reaches up and pinches him on the arm, hard even through the thick material of his coat. “You made Mr. Charles sad,” she grouches, folding her arms across her chest.

“Do you know where he is?”

Her eyes narrow, it’s not particularly threatening. “Why would I tell you?”

“Because -” gods, why hadn’t he thought of it before? Shaw. He could have finally caught up with Erik - he could have _hurt Charles_. “I’ve put him in danger. Please, you have to help me, you have to -” and here he is begging a _child_ , but it doesn’t matter, not where Charles is concerned; he’d do _anything_. “You have to help me find him.”

She must hear the panic rising in his voice, noticed the tense line of his shoulders, because she deflates the next second and her arms drop. “I saw him a little while ago. He was going to take me home, but -” and her breath hitches, “he just _disappeared_. He was so sad ‘cause of what you said, and he was real quiet, but I swear I didn’t take my eyes off him, not until this scary man pushed me down.”

Erik’s blood goes cold. “The scary man - what did he look like?”

Jean frowns, and she purses her lips in concentration. “Tall?” She nods. “He was tall, definitely. I didn’t see a whole lot of him because it happened so fast, but it was like _really_ dark, too.”

“Did it happen in the square?”

She shakes her head. “No. By the tunnel, the one my papa sometimes gets to go through. It takes you to the capitol.”

Fuck, that - it _is_ Shaw. It couldn’t be anyone else.

“Charles did it for you, you know.” Jean looks up at him, her pale eyes reflecting the cafe lights, and he’s caught by the depth of the sadness in them. “It’s you. He doesn’t know it, but it’s you.”

Erik doesn’t have time for dancing around this - whatever it is Jean and the other children are going on about, there’s _no time_. “I’ll fix it, alright? I’ll fix everything. Just - tell me. Where did he take Charles?”

*

 

 

 

 

He moves at dawn. In the time since his arrival in town, he hasn’t once set foot in the capitol district. It was strategy; lure Shaw’s men to him, pick them off where they are were likely to be at a disadvantage, and save himself the risk of getting caught. The laws Shaw has set in the outer district aren’t quite as strict as those of his precious capitol - much easier to kill a horrible man and dispose of the body in the cover of darkness.

Erik also knew he couldn’t risk passing between the districts with any frequency. It was too dangerous; more the chance of being seen. He’d considered ways to bypass that, but there is no conceivable way to scale the walls that separate the districts, nor is there a crevice or crack large enough to allow for slipping between them. Believe him, he’s thought of everything. He’s spoken to everyone he could consult on the matter, older citizens who moved out to the colonies and offered such information for a pretty penny.

He threw on his best clothes before he left; a suit jacket over a form-fitting dress shirt, the better to blend in at the capitol. Logan had allowed him to stay at the cafe while he waited for the right time to come - first light, he knows he’ll benefit from it greatly - and it had been strange enough that the man’s demeanor was... different, somehow. Changed. Erik didn’t put much thought into it, but he has the growing suspicion that Logan knows more about what transpired between him and Charles than he’s let on.

There’s only one guard at the tunnel entrance this early. And it’s easy work, lifting himself over the chain-link fence and approaching from behind, knocking the man out. He doesn’t need to use his knives, not yet anyway. Erik makes his way through the tunnel only to find the guard on the other side to be dozing at his station beside the gate. It’s much too simple to do the same with him as Erik did the other. A knock over the back of the head, followed by carefully setting the body aside on the ground.

Erik finds the button in the man’s right breast pocket, and he presses it, triggering the second gate’s opening sequence.

The white of the buildings that line the street pass him by in a blur. He keeps focused, slipping toward the capitol hall without so much as detection by the dog he sees at one point, out for a morning walk with its owner.

The streets themselves are brighter than Erik is used to, even this early. The grey haze of light that follows after dawn fills the quiet, empty places between buildings. It’s a good thing he’s used to it; before leaving for the colonies where the town’s curse does not reach, Erik had never before known sunlight.

There are more guards posted around the main hall, but he manages to skirt them, circling around to the back entrance where the clocktower attaches to the back wing. The design alone should have struck him as odd - the clocktower is an add-on, not separate, and according to his father’s notes Shaw was insistent upon it.

Inside the door, the square-shaped room can’t be more than twenty feet across in both directions. Unlike the brickwork of the district, the clocktower is made of cold marble, granite fixtures and sleek tile adorning every other surface. The stairs spiral upward above him, some thirty or so stories high. There’s a railing, at least, cold as the black iron is beneath his hand, and Erik only spares the time it takes to readjust his knapsack onto his other shoulder before setting out and beginning the climb.

Windows break up the sweeps of marble now and again, fifteen feet tall masterworks of stain-glass filled with biblical imagery, battles of some kind or another - Shaw always did love his irony. The sheer size of them has the inside of the tower colored in the same natural grey light as outside.

It must be verging on a half-hour by the time Erik emerges on the top platform. He has only ever seen pictures of the outside, so he hadn’t known what to expect. It certainly isn’t this - an enormous, empty room. To his left, the clockface, what must be three, four times his height upwards and lengthwise, a circle of white marred only by the clock’s giant hands. Above him, the rafters and beams that support the roof are distant fixtures, so far up it would seem there’s no roof at all, only an expanse of shadow.

Carefully, Erik bends so as to drop the knapsack to the floor. He tugs the tie free and digs around for the bulkiest item he’d had to carry.

The gasoline container is nondescript for this very purpose. If someone had caught him, they wouldn’t have been left any more the ware of its use.

Once the cap is off, he tips the container just enough the trail the fluid around the perimeter of the room. He’ll get the lighter next, and all he’ll have to do is wait. Shaw has always been so _good_ at finding him. All it takes is once more, for old time’s sake, and Erik will drop the lighter, _end this_ -

“I must say,” comes a silky voice behind him, “I wasn’t expecting something so... _dramatic_ from you, Erik.”

Erik’s spine straightens, and when he turns around, he does so slowly. “Shaw,” he greets, as level as he can manage.

And there stands the councilman himself - alone, none of his lackeys present - taking up the doorway that leads to the stairs. He seems remarkably composed for someone who just walked up thirty flights; Erik is still short of breath.

“I knew,” Shaw remarks, grinning and bringing up a finger to flick it about. Though he’s dressed like a statesman, his dark coat flares out behind him like a cloak. “I _knew_ it was you, my boy. The things you’ve done, accomplished. I’m impressed.”

That’s just Shaw’s style: flatter with cool smiles and thinly veiled threat, _knowing_ he has the upperhand and waiting for his opponents to surrender in due time. The smile is the very same that Erik recalls from when he was a child, and it has the same effect, too - Erik’s skin is crawling.

“I don’t care how it makes you _feel_ ,” Erik snarls. “I’d have thought that obvious enough - now, say what you really want to say to me and be done with it.”

His fingers curl around the gasoline container, enough that it creaks beneath them. Distract Shaw - make demands, make him think he’s _won_. The container is empty, but Shaw will surely comment on it soon enough -

“Why, Erik, did you learn those manners in the colonies?” Shaw smirks at that, and it’s somewhat alarming to see the man pacing in tight loops before the doorway, sweeping closer every few steps. The man tsks. “Surely those aren’t the ones your mother taught you?”

“Enough.” Erik takes a step back; even that small action is giving something to Shaw.

The councilman stops and brushes his coat back, settles his hands on his wiry hips. “Oh, is that so.” The real Shaw has surfaced, then, any jovial air he’d put on flickering away like a candle gone out in a storm. He sneers at Erik, tsking again - and it shouldn’t be possible, how much Shaw can rile Erik with just a few words. “I do hope you’re not about to do anything foolish. You wouldn’t want something to happen to...” but then Shaw presses his lips closed, taps them with a finger.

Without thinking, Erik drops the container, all the gasoline still inside splatters at his feet and he hisses, “If you _hurt_ him -”

“Ah! There he is. My little fireball.” Shaw looks all too pleased about that. He waves a hand, and the light streaming through the high windows and the silhouette of the clockface, all the light in the room - it _wavers_. “Very well, then. Let’s see what Charles has to say about all this, hmm?”

The councilman’s fingers curl _just_ so, and a streak of shadow from up in the rafters drips down the walls, coming together in an amorphous swirl of black at Shaw’s feet - which, _impossible_ -

The shadows morph and tangle before Erik’s eyes, and he’s frozen at the sight of it, tension resounding through his bones like a whipcord. How is Shaw - but then it would seem the world comes to a stop. The shadows slink away again, melting into nothing across the molded floorboards, and there, at the center of where the mass had been - _Charles_.

Charles is on his hands and knees, and he’s coughing, spluttering, his eyes frantic as they jump from side to side. He looks pale, too pale, and there are drops of blood dripping from his mouth. “Erik,” he croaks when his eyes slow down. Their gazes meet across the room, and Charles tries to stand -

“Ah, ah,” Shaw says, giving another effortless flick of his hand. At the movement, Charles’ body goes crashing back to the floor. “There’s no need for _that_ , Charles. Just stay like so - look pitiful - yes, just like that, very _good_.”

Charles reaches an arm across the floor, dragging it through the dust and debris; he releases a sharp noise of pain. “No, no, _please_.”

And Erik can do nothing, can’t even _think_ \- what the hell is Shaw doing, _how_ -

“Now, Charles,” Shaw begins again. “I want you to tell Erik what you told me.”

“I...,” Charles spits more blood on the floor. “I don’t...”

The councilman tilts his head to the other side, smiling congenially. “Hmm?” The threat in the small sound is there, just beneath the surface. He raises his hand again.

“I -” Charles’ eyes jump sharply from Erik to Shaw’s hand, and he nearly chokes in his haste to speak, “I love him, please don’t - don’t hurt Erik, you said you only wanted _me_ -”

“I did didn’t I?” Shaw looks at Erik as he says this. “You’re not wrong,” and he chuckles, gods know _why_ , the sick bastard, “but it’s come to my attention that the deal we made was much too generous, and I’m rescinding my offer.”

Erik jerks, at that. “What are you _talking_ about?” He glances at Charles, though it’s taking all of his will not to run to him, and Charles looks just as confused by the words.

“What am I talking about?” Shaw says this slowly, rolling the question around his mouth. “That’s right - you don’t know! Let me enlighten you, my dear boy.”

The second Shaw raises his hand again, Erik lurches forward, a scream bursting from his mouth, “No!”

It’s too late though, _always_ too late. Too late to save his parent’s and now -

More shadows swirl around the room, crawling from the furthest recesses, and they race toward Charles, unable to move himself from the ground in time to run, to get _away_. Erik is still screaming that next moment, because it happens so fast; the shadows envelope Charles like an oil slick, shrinking inward until in the place where Charles was just laying is -

The last remnants of the darkness dissipate in the air. In Charles’ place is a pile of his clothes, and then there, beneath the collar of the cardigan, _movement_.

The room is much, much darker after whatever Shaw did. And it’s a startling sight to see the pinpoint of light that emerges from the clothing. It’s a brilliant blue - more a glow that anything else, and reminiscent of the fireflies Erik saw so frequently as a child. There’s shifting, then the glow becomes brighter, so blue - the color of Charles’ _eyes_.

It dims down to something more manageable, enough so that, in its place, Erik can see the shape of a very tiny man.

The man has _wings_.

“Erik!” comes the clear sound of Charles’ voice, but where - “Erik, I’m fine! I’m right here, you can see me - gods, you can _see me_!”

Erik is struck dumb by the sight of Charles, a tiny version of him with shimmery wings in amongst the scattering of clothes, but that’s not -

“How quaint,” Shaw remarks, and he sounds very amused indeed. “You succeeded, Charles. The poor fool fell in love with you.”

Erik springs back into action, his fists clench, and he snarls, “What did you _do_?”

“Why, I didn’t do anything!” Still amused, then. “He came to me as is, begging to be turned human so he could be with you - it’s all very disney, isn’t it?”

Charles has begun talking over the councilman though, and Erik finds his attention torn: “You have to remember me. Please, you can stop him, I _know_ you can.”

“ _Enough._ ”  Charles - or the strange creature pretending to be him - goes instantly quiet.

“Charles...” Erik’s heart is beating like a drum against his ribs, and it hurts how little he can make of all this, the helplessness he feels in that moment, not knowing what to do.

Shaw twists on his heel and circles behind Charles, prowling around the corner of the room. “He can see you - isn’t that enough? Yes, you’re a fairy. Now, as our agreement stipulated,” and there the councilman’s gaze narrows, “I get your flower.”

The fairy chokes. “No, you can’t! It’s Erik’s, keep your hands off of it.”

“You’re in no place to make demands,” Shaw reminds. He turns his focus on Erik again. “Now then - hand it over, boy.” His hand comes up, but instead of pulling any of the tricks he had previously, he merely flicks his fingers down, gesturing for Erik to hand whatever it is over, which -

_I get your flower._

But the only flower that comes to mind is...

“He’s a warlock, Erik.” Charles again, grunting as he struggles to stand, but it would seem Shaw is using his powers to keep the fairy in place. “He’ll use it to hurt people, to keep the town the way it is forever. Don’t listen to him!”

...the flower in the cigarette case. _Erik’s_ flower.

“You have to remember!”

Shaw’s smile stretches. “The flower, if you please.”

It starts slow, a spot of something at the back of his mind, an eddy of colors that start out fuzzy before coming into soft focus. Yellow and white - then a stark, painful slash of blue. Passing images, too quick to hold onto; running, the brush of reeds against his shins and the smell of fresh lavender, cherry blossoms and the cool press of piano keys beneath his fingers, the flush that rises in his cheeks at the feel of eyes watching him play, a candle on a windowsill, the guilt and fear and anguish at discovering his parents, and then _Charles_ \- Charles there, always, on Erik’s shoulder or perched in his hand, the sorrow that wrecked Charles’ face when he hears the news, and the hurt of it. Pushing Charles away when everything became too much.

The pain, like an incision, or maybe not quite, of forgetting. One day and then the next. Gone.

“No,” he finds himself saying. “No, I don’t think so.”

Shaw’s eyes flicker. The councilman pushes back a part of his cape and frowns. “Excuse me?”

Even across the space left the between them, Erik searches out Charles' eyes, and when he catches them, he gives the fairy a slow smile.

There's the split-second of realization on Charles' face, radiant and joyous, before - "Raven, now!"

The fairy's voice is louder than Erik would have thought possible when it hits the air. There's no time to dwell on it though; before Erik can so much as stagger a step forward, the glass of one of the windows shatters and the room is _swarmed_.

At first he thinks its another of Shaw's tricks. Shadow. But no, it isn't that, they're... _fireflies_. Hundreds of them, flying into the open room and going off in every direction.

In the chaos, very few things register - Shaw is nowhere to be seen and must have been overcome by the swarm. Erik doesn't miss the significance of it; the fireflies are lighting up almost simultaneously, chasing away any remaining shadow in the tower as they stretch up into the rafters high above.

"Erik!" Charles' voice is nearly lost in the din. "Whatever you're going to do, do it now!"

It takes seconds to retrieve the lighter from his pocket, to snap the clasp back and toss it down to the ground.

Later, Erik will find it hard to recall the details of what transpired next. The gasoline caught fire, but instead of standing around and letting it kill him and Shaw both, like he had planned for so long, Erik has a mission now. And that mission is keeping Charles safe.

Somewhere in the chaos of the fireflies zipping across his vision at a rapid-fire pace, and his sudden inability to walk straight, Erik manages to find his fairy. Or Charles finds him, the details are unimportant. What _is_ important is that they make it to the door to the stairs in one piece - ignoring Charles' protests, he'd shoved the fairy beneath his coat in an effort to protect him from the heat. 

It's only now, at the threshold, that Erik hesitates. He throws a searching glance over his shoulder, and sees almost nothing but the flames licking up the walls, framing the clockface and beginning to cloud the air with smoke. It's getting harder and harder to breath, and Charles makes a noise of protest against his chest, but Erik has to find Shaw, he has to be _sure_.

And - there, at the foot of the clock. Shaw has fallen to his knees as he attempts to put out the fire that's caught on his clothes; and it's odd to finally see the man so helpless as he is now, flicking his hands in a useless effort to call forth dogs to heel that aren't there. If the fireflies weren't enough, the fire ended any hope of that power.

Shaw must sense Erik's gaze on him, because the councilman suddenly looks up. The fireflies are retreating overhead, the smoke getting too thick, but Erik can't look away. Not from the hatred burning like smoldering coals in Shaw's slitted eyes.

"Look what you've done!" Shaw roars over the groans of the tower's foundations. "Your parents would be ashamed - look at what you've become!"

Erik bites back a snarl. Instead, he drops his hand to the doorknob and feels his mouth quirk up in one corner. "I'm no monster, not like you."

A finality, then.

Erik's hand clenches on the knob and he prepares to pull it closed, but before he can, one of the rafters crumples and collapses down to where Shaw had been kneeling only seconds before.

The tower gives a whine, the outside walls caving inward, and it's almost on autopilot that Erik makes a run for it.

They made it, they - 

Survived. And it's funny how only a week ago Erik couldn't bare the thought of remembering the past, not with Shaw a set fixture in his present, his future, but now, he finds he wants nothing more than those memories.

And with Charles, _remembering_ , the last vestiges of Shaw's reign a burning pillar at their backs, it's memories - and the ones still to come - he shall have.

\- Epilogue -

News of the clocktower's destruction spreads quickly. But the turn of the earth is always quicker. By daybreak, the district Erik called home for the most important years of his life sees the sun for the first time in decades.

As far as they can puzzle, Sebastian Shaw was a warlock set out for more and more power. Before the clocktower's construction, keeping the outer district in night was a drain too costly to continue, thus his contracting of Erik's father. The fairies, of course, had no knowledge of what Shaw was doing, let alone the raw power he'd been funneling from them for almost a century.

Shaw's death paved the way for so much good. A public ordinance has been sanctioned by the newly elected councilman - one Hank McCoy, who proved surprisingly amenable to utilizing his expansive knowledge and goodwill to help the town regain its footing. New projects are put into production immediately - the first of which is demolishing the wall that separates the districts. No longer living in fear, many step forward to help, Logan Howlett among them. The last they heard, the man was working on the construction of homes, another part of the movement to have every person left to the streets given safety and housing.

It's not much, but it's a start. The conditions out in the colonies will be a long way to improving. But as of the last few days, Genosha's gates have been opened for all.

Erik takes to the cottage by the garden. A quiet life is not one he is so used to, but it fits quick to him better than any mold could hope. Hank moved out to capitol and was eager enough to hand it over to Erik, though it didn't take much convincing; the cottage, of course, is a place that he can share with Charles, and with Charles alone.

It's almost like nothing changed at all in that respect - the fairies are just as much a secret as they were before, to anyone who doesn't know where to look. There's not as dire a need for Charles and Raven to venture out with their fireflies anymore, but they want it enough to keep doing it, taking to the streets in the early evenings when the children are always waiting for them.

Erik loves nothing more than spending comfortable mornings on the porch with Charles, and more and more often, gardening. Yes - Charles is a miracle worker for getting him to come to enjoy it as he does. He'll never let it go.

And maybe it shouldn't be possible, but Erik doesn't forget Charles again. In fact, when Erik is feeling particularly grumpy and sees fit to wear his rumpled pajamas all day, Charles will send the fae children after him. Little Ororo has become quite taken with the man, always pestering him to teach her how to read, and Bobby and a few of the other boys idolize him as a hero. They'd trail after the poor man with awed expressions on their faces all day if Charles would let them.

Things settle like that, and Erik comes to love it as readily as he loves Charles and the many fairies that live there with them. But then again, he probably should've known better.

It happens one day in late spring. Erik had just finished pulling the pesky weeds from around his hydrangeas when he enters the cottage through the back door. His trousers are covered up to his knees in dirt and he heads straight for the kitchen. Before he went out, Charles had settled onto the windowsill above the sink for a nap in the sun, but, curiously, Erik finds the little nest Charles had made there left vacant.

"Charles?" Erik cuts off the tap and leans back to peer around the entryway into the living room. The cottage is surprisingly quiet that morning, not something Erik is used to, given the propensity of the younger fae to come barreling through the halls as they please.

But this - odd. Charles usually tells him if he's going out into the gardens. Plus, they had already decided to read to the children together that afternoon. They'd promised Raven, even, that they would take the children off her hands for an hour or two.

"Charles!" Erik calls again, louder this time.

His hand is on the faucet, about to turn it back on, when he hears it.

A loud thump. It's coming... from the back door?

Erik swipes one of the cloths off the handrail and towels off his hands as he makes his way over to it. Cautiously, he opens the door.

The site that greets him is none other than Charles, but - not the Charles he's come to know and love in recent months. This Charles is decidely _human_.

"Hullo," Charles says. His eyelids flicker down then up again, and in the sunlight, his eyes have never looked quite so blue. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could find Erik, do you?"

And damn him, he's always doing this. Sounding amused and put-upon at the same time whenever Erik comes in from the garden with his face streaked in dirt. Charles likes to pretend he's some strange mud-man come to steal the snacks from the fridge.

"How...?"

Charles laughs, the sound too happy, too sweet, but Erik doesn't think he will ever get enough of it. Then Charles siddles up to him and grabs him by the front of his shirt, pulls him in. Their lips meets, and yes - this. He wants it forever. But he'll take every day for the rest of his life, just the same.


End file.
